PXIe 8360 link LED red blinking

[kkwong]

I got a PXIe chassis with PIXe 8360 installed and connected to PCIe 8361 on the host.  I found that when I powered up the PC, the LINK LED turned RED very soon and keep blinking (during PC's booting).   The power LED is Green.  The Window (XP) cannot detect the PCIe 8361 (not in MAX).   The PCIe8361 have the Power LED Green and Link LED green (blinking).  I am sure what's wrong. 

I could not found the "RED LINK blinking" symptom in any document.  

[USBarnes]

kkwong,

Thank you for posting. Could you provide me with the chassis you are using? Also, make sure that you have the appropriate drivers installed for your hardware on the host PC. Next, let's try a few things:

1) Try another cable if possible.

2) Try another PCIe card if possible. If you don't have another PCIe card, try moving the card to a different PCIe slot in the computer.

3) Try another PXIe card if possible.

Only try each of these changes one at a time. For instance, don't swap the cable and change the PCIe slot in the same step because we may not know what fixed it (the cable or the PCIe slot). Also, do you notice the power light to the chassis blinking red or turning red while the MXI card is blinking red? Let me know what you find with these tests.

[kkwongsupertex]

Hi Robert,

I have already tried 2 different cables, 2 PXIe-8360, 2 PCIe-8361 cards already. Same results obtained.  We have tried it on PXIe-1071 and PXIe-1078.  Here is the Leds behaviors:

1. PXIe-8360 "Link" LED blinking red.  The power LED keeps green all the time.  

2. PCIe-8361 LEDs are both green. Its link led is blinking green.

The blinking red starts right after we turn on the PC, even before the WINDOWS booting up.  It seems pointing to the BIOS or motherboard communication issues. 

To give you a full pitcure.

1.  We are using a PCI-PCIe adapter for the PCIe-8361, since our PC mother board does not have the PCIe slot.

2.  We did install the PCIe-8361 with the PCI-PCIe adapter successful around 1 year ago on the same PC. Then we removed the PCIe-8361 sometime later. (Since then, there could be some software updates and hardware changed).  Now, when we plugged it in back to the PC. It stopped working.  

3.  We have tried different PCI-PCIe adapters already.

4.  We have sent a PCI-PCIe adapter and a PCIe-8361 to local NI support. They got it working.

5.  Local NI support has borrowed us a PCI-8361. We have it working on the PC and detecting the PCIe--8360.

6.  NI MXI-Express BIOS Compatibility Software has been installed.

7.  Window XP is running.

8.  The PCI-PCIe adapter and PCIe-8361 have been plugged into different PCI slots and gave same result.

9.  The mother board is PCA-6010 with PCA-6114P12-0B3E backplanes (Primary PCI: 3 slots; Secondary PCI: 9 slots).

Hope this information help.

Thanks!

[USBarnes]

kkwong,

It seems like this is due to the PCIe-PCI adapter you are using. Could you provide more information about this adapter? The easiest solution would be to simply use the PCI-8361 rather than the PCIe-8361. It does seem to be a problem with the BIOS. You mentioned that you have the BIOS compatibility software installed. Did you follow the instructions in the readme for the BIOS compatibility software? Specifically, can you confirm that the DIP switch 1 is in the ON position?

[kkwongsupertex]

We have already switched on the DIP Switch 1 to ON position.  The PCIe-PCI adapter is StarTech #PCI1PEX1. 

Is there any HW and SW setup sequence which I missed?

[USBarnes]

kkwong,

If you followed the readme, there probably isn't anything in the HW or SW setup that you missed.

A few things to note here is that it isn't recommended to use a PXIe system with a PCI bus, because your communication rates will be greatly reduced by the limitation of the PCI bus. If you have a machine with only a PCI bus, I suggest using PCI-PXI MXI with a PXI chassis or upgrading your host machine to one with a PCIe bus.

Moving forward, it's going to be very hard to troubleshoot this issue with a third party adapter in the mix since we do not support the adapter. The most helpful thing I can suggest if you want to move forward with the hardware that you have is to revert your host machine back to the configuration that allowed the MXI connection to work properly. As you mentioned, this is likely a BIOS issue. Otherwise, if you were to purchase a PCI-8361 (as you mentioned was successful in your previous post) you would be good to go.