Is there such a thing as an external PCI rack?

[Brian_Beal]

I know this is asking a lot, but it there any way to use a PCI device from a laptop?  Perhaps an external rack connected by USB, Ethernet, Cardbus, etc.  Any ideas?

[lmtis]

Sure, just Google PCI expansion chassis.  Tons of choices.

[Brian_Beal]

Thanks, Jim.  I guess I didn't put in the right words.  It appears that Magma is the main manufacturer of these.  They cost about 3X as much as a desktop PC, though.  Is there any way to use a desktop PC as an expansion chassis?

Brian

[Ray.R]

If you have a destop PC available, why not use it instead of the Laptop?

Can you describe what you are trying to achieve?  and why you want to use a Laptop if you have access to a desktop?

R

[ceties]

Well I think there are couple of benefits of using the external chassis.

1] one is it's portability. You just take your laptop and the rack and you go. Then you can measure anywhere. To move a desktop is usually more difficult.

2] Noise reduction. The rack is more resistant to the industry conditions (electric field, temperature, dust) than common PC

3] In common desktops you have usually just a few PCI/PCI-e slots available

We decided to buy one of the Magma chassis because we needed DAQ card with synchronous sampling over four channels and high sampling rates. And because the measurement will be done on more places we needed portability. There is no NI device that would fulfill above written demands so the external chassis plus PCI card was the only option. BUT if you don't have such specific demands but you still want to have portable system I would go for compactDAQ

[Brian_Beal]

My laptop is my main PC. I am in the field a lot, either doing installs or demonstrating products to customers.  Ideally, I need to keep everything on one PC.  When needed, I could use the expansion rack or second PC.

[DFGray]

There are a couple of other things you could consider:

1. Use USB versions of the instruments.  For example, a USB-6251 is a pretty complete instrumentation set for most things.  For more flexibility, you could use a compactDAQ chassis and choose your modules depending on your application.
2. Use a PXI or PXIe chassis with a MXI interface to your laptop.  This is essentially what you have been discussing above, but has the added advantage of the synchronization and triggering support you get with PXI.  This is a performance option that will require a power source.

Note that I am a National Instruments employee, so am somewhat biased .

[Brian_Beal]

That is a good suggestion for NI products, but the card I really need to use in available in PCI format only.  The PCI expansion rack seems to be a pretty clean solution.