Can PCIe MXI Express cards be used in external enclosures?

[ClimbingColorado]

Hello,

The NI Express Card 8360 (PCMCIA Card) has been discontinued.  However, I'd still like to be able to use my PXI-1010 chassis, and cards, with a laptop computer.  Is it possible to use a PCIe-8361 card in an external enclosure, like the StarTech Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Expansion Chassis?  Has anyone done this before?

Thanks in advance!

[Robert__R]

Hi ClimbingColorado,

That should work fundamentally. Thunderbolt is tunneling PCIe to the expansion chassis, which is what needs to happen for communication (USB-based expansion doesn't work). But...

Thunderbolt introduces some modern requirements/restrictions that may not work with the chassis or cards. There are some DMA protections intended to prevent plugging in rogue Thunderbolt devices that may not play nicely with the DMA mechanisms of your devices (though you can often disable those protections). Also, Thunderbolt doesn't support legacy IO space, which may be required (or even requested and not used) by older devices.

So, it depends more on whether the PXI-1010 chassis and its cards are compatible with Thunderbolt (and I don't know the answer to that).

- Robert

[KCCC]

Hi Robert,

Do you know whether NI PCI-6221  and PCI-4472 cards are compatible with the following expansion enclosure? Thanks in advance!

PCI Express to 2 PCI & 2 PCIe Expansion Enclosure System - Full Length - TAA

https://www.startech.com/en-eu/cards-adapters/pex2pcie4l?srsltid=AfmBOooTAqIE783gGRxJs7T1IyF2EHA7duz...

Regards,

KCCC

[Robert__R]

Hi KCCC,

It's the same answer -- it could work, but the PCI cards could use legacy resources that aren't compatible, or the DMA protections could prevent functionality. You'd have to try it to know for sure. Some hosts might let you disable the DMA protections, so you may get it to work by doing that (if it's a problem for those cards).

- Robert

[santo_13]

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@ClimbingColorado wrote:

Hello,

The NI Express Card 8360 (PCMCIA Card) has been discontinued.  However, I'd still like to be able to use my PXI-1010 chassis, and cards, with a laptop computer.  Is it possible to use a PCIe-8361 card in an external enclosure, like the StarTech Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Expansion Chassis?  Has anyone done this before?

Thanks in advance!

---

In short, it is a guessing game; you don't know for sure. It is because, NI Hardware use low level features of the PCI(e) bus whereas the tunnelling through Thunderbolt by the expansion chassis vendors don't implement it completely enough that it is transparent to the NI Hardware. They seem to focus on general purpose PCI(e) cards such as graphics cards, NIC etc., which not necessarily use the PCI(e) bus features to its full extent.