Drop out of data having moved card to new motherboard

[Will_Crowe]

Dear all,

I am getting data drop-out from an SCXI chassis, since I replaced the motherboard of my computer. I have a PCI 6035 card plugged into the PC, and this is connected to a 4-slot SCXI chassis (with two 1102, an 1100, and 1124 cards). I lose about 1 data point in every 10 or 15 at worst. All channels return NaN at the same time. I notice that the problem gets worse, the longer I have the test running for.

I tried removing the card, and re-inserting it. At first this seemed to lessen the problem, but it has got as bad as before. I had to replace the motherboard in my computer, and the problem only started with the new motherboard. Has anyone any experience of this kind of problem?

Regards,

Will

[MarkLe]

Hi Will,

Did you reinstall all of your software after you changed your motherboard? How similar is the new motherboard to the old one, is it a direct replacement? Are there any firmware or BIOS updates for your motherboard that may need to be run on the new system? 

It could be some BIOS settings are different on the new motherboard if it is very similar to the old one, I would have a look at your plug and play OS settings in BIOS, and any other settings relating to the PCI bus.

Also try running the system with any other non-critical PCI board removed, see if this cures the problem you're seeing.

I hope some of these suggestions help!

Best wishes,

Mark

National Instruments UK and Ireland

[Will_Crowe]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for getting back to me. I have checked the Bios settings, and it just says "PCI slot1 IRQ - Auto" and the same for slot 2. The motherboard is brand new, and shouldn't need any firmware updates (according to our computer guy in here, who put it in) and I don't have any other "non-critical PCI boards" in this computer that I can remove, as you suggested.

Do you think that a bios setting would cause an intermittent fault like this? Also, I notice the problem only starts to appear some time after you begin logging. In this morning's test, we got two hours (250 data points) before it started to happen, and then it was happening every 10 or 15 samples. Have you any other suggestions?

Thanks for this,

Will.

[MarkLe]

Hi Will,

Thanks for your reply - BIOS settings for the PCI bus may or may not cause dropout for the DAQ product, it's just one of the most obvious things to check if you've changed your motherboard (as the settings for the new board won't necessarily be the same as the old one). The settings you have sound fine for a Windows 2000/XP machine.

Are you sure your new setup is up to the specification to handle what your VI is trying to do (ie: have you got the same amount of RAM or greater, have you changed the processor?). Have you installed any extra software on the new system that may be starting up periodically and interrupting the data acquisition (or draining too many system resources).

If you can't isolate the problem to a difference based purely upon the hardware upgrade, you will need to start looking at the VI structure itself and isolating what is happening when you have these dropouts - is the VI reporting any errors that you're clearing automatically, is it slowing down at particular points for any reason? It doesn't sound like you're sampling very quickly, how often are you taking data points?

Finally, I would try and run the test panels in Measurement and Automation Explorer, and see if you're seeing intermittent dropout there. If you're seeing the same issue, then your problem is either with the hardware itself or the system setup, if the problem is nto apparent then it will be something to do with your particular VI.

I hope this helps, good luck!

Mark

National Instruments UK and Ireland