PXIe-8301 compatibility with PXIe-1084 chassis?

[mj0541]

Hello,

Is the PXIe-8301 thunderbolt control card compatible with the PXIe-1084 chassis? I have a PXIe-1084 chassis with a PXIe-8301 installed in the controller slot and I've been trying to connect my HP ZBook to the chassis via my Thunderbolt port and I can't even see the chassis in NI MAX. I did get the green light on the PXIe-8301 though. I did remove all of the modules from the chassis before trying to connect. I have previously been able to connect my HP ZBook to a PXIe-1078 chassis with a PXIe-8301 module and it worked.

Thank you.

[santo_13]

Definitely, 1084 is compatible with 8301. The requirements are simple as the Chassis has to be PXIe and has a controller slot.

Questions,

• Are you sure that the USB C you're plugging in on the laptop is Thunderbolt 3?
• Did you configure the switches on PXI Chassis to power up by the power button instead of the controller?
• Were you able to power up other instruments on the chassis by pushing the power button on the chassis?

Note - even if you have a Thunderbolt 3 compatible laptop, sometimes the Thunderbolt support is limited in terms of available bus addresses which could mean that OS cannot allocate addresses to each peripheral in the chassis.

[mj0541]

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@santo_13 wrote:

Definitely, 1084 is compatible with 8301. The requirements are simple as the Chassis has to be PXIe and has a controller slot.

Questions,

• Are you sure that the USB C you're plugging in on the laptop is Thunderbolt 3?
• Did you configure the switches on PXI Chassis to power up by the power button instead of the controller?
• Were you able to power up other instruments on the chassis by pushing the power button on the chassis?

Note - even if you have a Thunderbolt 3 compatible laptop, sometimes the Thunderbolt support is limited in terms of available bus addresses which could mean that OS cannot allocate addresses to each peripheral in the chassis.

---

Yes, I did plug the thunderbolt cable into the thunderbolt port. The Thunderbolt software popped up a window asking me to give the PXIe-8301 permission to connect, which I did. I could see the PXIe-8301 connected in the Thunderbolt Software but not in NI-MAX. 

Yes, I powered up the PXIe-1084 by pressing the power button on the front of the chassis. The fans spun up and I got a green LED on the PXIe-8301 after plugging in my customer's laptop. I just couldn't see the chassis or any modules in NI MAX.

Over the weekend, I tested my customer's laptop on my own PXIe-8301/PXIe-1078 chassis and it worked; the chassis appeared in NI MAX and all of the modules were enumerated. The problem seems to be with my customer's PXIe-1084. I did remove all of the modules from the PXIe-1084 before attempting to connect and still I got nothing in NI MAX.

I will try again this morning with the customer's PXI chassis and see what happens. I also received a brand new PXIe-1083 chassis this morning and I will try that as well with the customer's laptop.

[mj0541]

Here's a screenshot showing the situation. I did click View -> Refresh in NI MAX before taking the screenshot.

 The PXIe modules in NI MAX that are X'ed out are from testing this laptop with my PXIe-1078 chassis, not the customer's PXIe-1084 chassis.

[santo_13]

If you used the same laptop to test for 1078 and 1084, but it worked only with 1078, this is pointing towards insufficient PCIe address allocation by your laptop.

The case would be that 1078 has lesser slots and hence requires less bus addresses where as its higher for 1084. Your laptop might have limited bus allocation for Thunderbolt and hence the issue.

Try running the utility from this article and check the max busses.
https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YHwZCAW&l=en-US

https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/documentation/supplemental/14/understanding-mxi-express-enumeration...

If your laptop does not show 0xff as max busses, you are limited by the laptop.

[mj0541]

I think I figured it out. I wanted to connect the customer laptop to my PXIe-1083 chassis but the PXIe-1083 is not supported by PXI Platform Services 19.5 (which is what the customer's laptop had on it) so I upgraded to 20.7. I was able to connect to the PXIe-1083. I then tried connecting to the customer's PXIe-1084 and, lo and behold, everything appeared to work. I reinstalled the PXI modules in the chassis and they each enumerated in NI MAX. So PXI Platform Services appeared to be the issue.

Edit: I found more information here, https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/documentation/bugs/21/pxi-platform-services-20-7-bug-fixes.html . This sounds like my problem.

[santo_13]

Glad that you were able to figure out and fix the issue