Installtion Labview RT on PXI Controller

[Texas_Diaz]

Hey Ralph.  

That is to be expected if you skipped the last 9 steps marked "1-6" and then "1-3".  That's because the USB Flash Drive formatter is for the RT PC Desktop Utilities, designed specifically for RT Desktop systems, which know absolutely nothing about a chassis or slots - a desktop system has no such concepts.  The first 15 steps marked "1-15" are simply to massage the filesystem, and then steps "1-6" are to reconfigure your system to return its state to a known condition (to make it remember it's a PXI and not a desktop), and then the last 3 steps marked "1-3" are to return the system back to RT run mode.  

Yeah, I know, sometimes even I feel more confused than a cow on astro turf when dealing with these kinds of issues.  The PXI RT Safe Mode in the BIOS doesn't know how to blap a partition back to FAT because it has to handle the case of sharing a hard drive with a Windows partition, dual-booting Windows/RT on the same partition, or even booting Windows/Linux/RT on a Hypervisor system; knowing how to blast a partition is inherently dangerous in any of these situations.  That's why the functionality only exists in the USB RT Desktop Utilities, where we expect you to have some idea of what you're doing - or at least are ready to live with the consequences.  

So what you need to do is remove the USB Flash Drive from the system (put it in your pocket or a desk drawer and forget about it), boot your system in LV RT Safe Mode using the BIOS's LabVIEW Real-Time boot menu, format the system via MAX, boot your system into LV RT Mode using the BIOS's LabVIEW Real-Time boot menu, and then you're good-to-go.

-Danny

[rapuckett]

Thank you again for the quick reply.

I'll try again in the morning, but I'm fairly certain I followed those last steps.  It helps to know that's what to expect if you don't do it right.

Thanks again,

Ralph

[Texas_Diaz]

Hey Ralph,

Hah!  There are more ways things can go wrong than I care to put in a Discussion Forum post - I prefer to just tell you what to do rather than tell you the myriad of ways it can go sour on you if done wrong (or incompletely).  I have to assume you follow all directions, and let me know if something isn't quite how I said it should be (like you did).

One of the ways you can tell you did it right (and the controller is now going to be treated like a PXI controller) is that there WILL NOT be a "pcmon.bin" file in your controller's root directory, nor a "safemode.exe" file - both of these indicate you're most likely still running as a Desktop RT PC.  Also if you boot using the "Windows/Other" boot mode in the BIOS the controller should fail to boot - this is expected, normal, and correct for a PXI running native RT. 

-Danny

[rapuckett]

I'm not having much luck.  I've tried several times and still the same result.  "Dev1" and so on for the devices.  I even started completely over formatting with the USB drive.  No change.

Just to be clear:

Steps 1-2 were replaced with your later post (message 7) with the USB boot utility.  Then starting at Step 3.  After step 15 (and starting the next section with steps 1-6), I pulled the USB drive and put it in my pocket 🐵

Boot into LabVIEW RT safemode.  Right-Click on device and "Format Disk."  Interesting side note.  On a true purchased RT PXI, unconfigured, I can't Format.  You have to put it into Safe mode.  However, with this one, I have the option to Format when in RT mode.

In Safe mode I format disk.  Boot up into RT mode.  I load my software and then check the devices.  Still only getting "Dev1" on my devices.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  I am following your instructions to a "T." 

Sorry to keep bugging you.  Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Ralph

[Texas_Diaz]

Hey Ralph,

First RT PC desktop systems cannot be formatted from MAX - the ability to format from MAX says you're doing something right.  🙂

Unfortunately we cannot auto-detect the chassis - the controller type tells us what kind of bus is behind the chassis (PXI or PXI-Express) but we cannot auto-detect the specific type of chassis your controller is plugged into.  Each chassis is potentially very different, especially dealing with how slots are assigned and managed (this drives the Hypervisor guys absolutely nuts!).  So, we cannot actually do anything until you manually define what chassis is actually on the controller.

So, try these steps:

1. Delete the controller entry from MAX - to do this, right-click on the controller entry and select "Delete".  This clears out all information MAX thinks it knows about your controller.
2. Click on the "Remote Systems" twistie in MAX, and press F5 on your keyboard.  This will force a refresh of the remote devices, and your controller should show back up.
3. Expand your controller, and right-click on "Devices and Interfaces" on your target and select "Create New" and then select "PXI Chassis" in the list.  You should get a list of chassis, and you should select the correct one based on the actual chassis you've got.  

I'm not super-experienced with DAQ, but I think this is how you configure the chassis on the controller and the DAQ devices may fall in line at that point.  I don't know if the device names will auto-magically be "PXISlot1" and so on, that's unfortunately not my speciality.  The OS under the hood is my speciality, sorry.  🙂

-Danny

[rapuckett]

I just had a light bulb moment.  I remember something about the "Create New" in some training I've had.  I'll try again in the morning and let you know how it goes.

Thanks a lot!!

Ralph

[RMaso]

Hello,

I thought I would post what fixed the issue Ralph has been having. We've figured out with the help of an NI app engineer that the thing to do at the end of the steps is to install software onto the PXI. I installed everything we need for our project, but I suspect the key was to have DAQmx installed on the PXI. After installing the software, everything came up like it was expected to. The cards in the PXI defaulted their names, and could then be changed. We could then proceed as normal.

Thanks for all the help!

[SarahW]

Hi,

I've been looking at how easy it would be to convert a Windows XP controller to RT. One thing I have noticed is I don't have a 'LabVIEW RT' or a 'PXI' tab in the BIOS. You mention an RT BIOS extension, is this what is missing? I did update the BIOS using the download found here http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2210/lang/en

Thanks,

Sarah

[Texas_Diaz]

We do not support the PXI(e)-8105 as an RT controller.  It has incompatible hardware for LabVIEW Real-Time, which is why it was only sold as a Windows controller.

-Danny

[SarahW]

OK, thanks.

Is there a list anywhere of which are/aren't supported? (it's the 8196, 8106 and 8108 I'm particularly interested in).

Many thanks,

Sarah