PCI-6515 connection to laptop

[johndoe514]

Hi,

I am not able to communicate with the NI PCI-6515 card recently purchased. Since I will be using it through a laptop, I've purchased a PCIe expander rack and a PCI to PCIe adapter board. The green LED on the NI PCI-6515 board is lit when plugged to my laptop.

What steps should I follow to enable Windows 11 to recognize this device? I'm using NI MAX version 2023 Q2, and the device does not show up in Devices and Interfaces when I hit refresh.

Thanks,

Expander: https://eshop.macsales.com/support/owc-mercury-helios-3s

PCIe to PCI: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex1pci1

[ZYOng]

PCI to PCIe Adapter for NI Devices

Using PCI adapters is not supported and recommended. If you want to use a laptop, you should return the device and get a USB device instead. A PXI device with thunderbolt chassis (PXIe-1090, PXIe-1073 etc) might work as well.

[rolfk]

PCI extenders of pretty much any size and flavor promis to transparently allow to use PCI(e) cards in any computer but almost always fail to do that for any but the most simple PCI devices. The standard is supposed to make this possible but is at the same time so complicated that most extenders you can buy only support a fraction of it properly. NI cards use various PCI features such as DMA transfers for high throughput capability and there are many possible modes and operations. If one of them is not implemented 100% correctly with the drivers for those extenders everything fails sooner than later.

And the manufacturers of these extenders seldom get their driver further than the beta state where it sort of works for a few cards. Then the development budget is used up and the sales figures look dire because of a lot of product returns and the product is discontinued. There is still stock around that gets sold by various resellers but there is nobody who can and will support that product anymore. Usually they are in China anyways and have long since moved to produce the next product or are not in operation anymore.

[santo_13]

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@johndoe514 wrote:

Hi,

I am not able to communicate with the NI PCI-6515 card recently purchased. Since I will be using it through a laptop, I've purchased a PCIe expander rack and a PCI to PCIe adapter board. The green LED on the NI PCI-6515 board is lit when plugged to my laptop.

What steps should I follow to enable Windows 11 to recognize this device? I'm using NI MAX version 2023 Q2, and the device does not show up in Devices and Interfaces when I hit refresh.

Thanks,

Expander: https://eshop.macsales.com/support/owc-mercury-helios-3s

PCIe to PCI: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex1pci1

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As others have already pointed out, there is no guarantee that this will ever work. Only known working solution is to get a PC and put the PCI card directly on the motherboard. If you're inclined to use a Laptop, you need to get a Thunderbolt 3 PXIe chassis and get PXI cards instead of the PCI version.

There are a lot of issues with Laptops with Thunderbolt as well, so the most robust solution is to get a Computer with PCI/PCIe slot or get a PXI system with MXI or embedded controller.