LV RT2010 on PXI-8145RT - cannot upgrade BIOS

[barchij]

Hello,

My lab has a pair of PXI systems controlled by PXI-8145RT, and LabView 2010 because we didn't upgrade for a while. As far as I can tell, this controller should be usable with LV2010 RT.

However, when I try to install software on the target using MAX, I get a message informing me that the software I wish to install (LV-Rt 10.0) is incompatible with the embedded OS on the machine. The ethernet driver will install without problem, for what that's worth.

When trying to upgrade the BIOS, I first receive a message that the controller contains version 10.2, and version 10.3 is available on the host. If I try to follow the upgrade procedure (jumper W2 bridged, of course) the controller sees a bit of network activity, reboots, gets a bit more traffic, and then MAX informs me that the update was not successful.

I can see that the flash update program was transferred to the target, and set as the boot executable, but clearly it did not complete successfully. Can anyone help with this? I've upgraded the CF card to 512MB (which it has no trouble using) and the RAM to 64MB - I didn't have an old 128MB SODIMM around. Is this the problem? Will booting with serial redirect help anything? I have to build a null-modem to make that work.

[David_A]

There has been known issues regarding installing LabVIEW 2010 on a PXI-8145RT Controller. Some people have gotten it to work if they install one piece of software at a time, however it is not recommended to install LV 2010 on a PXI-8145RT Controller. Since the PXI-8145RT Controller is an older piece of hardware trying to install the newest piece of software can be troublesome, it is kinda like installing the newest Windows Operating System on a older laptop, it is just not recommended.

I would recommend trying to install the software piece by piece and if that is not working, stay at your current LabVIEW version that your PXI-8145RT controllers were working with or getting in contact with your Field Engineer or Account Representative about an upgrade to your system.

David A.

[barchij]

Thanks for your reply, David.

Unfortunately, staying with our "current" Labview version is not really an option as we let our license lapse between ~8.0 and LV 2010. I'd be willing to go down to 8.6.1 if NI would provide media to us, but we're not going to pay for a downgrade. Updating the hardware isn't really an option for the near future, either.

The PXI-8145RT is still a supported controller, and should be treated as such. I understand the issues with installing new software on older hardware, but this is less of an issue with an RT system that won't be heavily taxed - it's basically going to be an I/O arbiter for a host app since most of our IO hardware is PXI.

Remember that the issue here is with upgrading the BIOS, not installing software, and the controller only needs to be brought from 10.2 to 10.3. I did fabricate a null-modem cable, and the results are interesting: it appears that MAX simply isn't setting things up properly for the controller to boot the flashupd.exe program that is supposed to flash the BIOS. When booting after MAX tries to initiate the flash update (and most other times), the controller reports the following:

Booting from disk...
Partition Found, Signature is 0xAA55 (must be 0xAA55)
Valid Boot Sector Found.
Boot File Not Found On Disk.
Boot File Not Found On Disk.
Unable to boot directly from drive.
Booting from ROM...

Launching LabVIEW RT Bios Extension loader application
LVRTBSXN 10.2.0
PXI-8140RT 0x7002
Intel 82559-ER Ethernet found.

Initializing network...done.
IP address is 192.168.2.20

This suggests to me that MAX isn't properly setting up the NI-RT.ini, flashupd.exe, and whatever other components on the CF card are required to boot the flash updater. Is it possible for you (or someone) to send me an image of a CF card properly formatted for BIOS update, a manifest of files & locations that should be on the disk, or something similar? I suspect this is a case of MAX doing something wrong, and it frustrates me that there isn't a resource that tells me how to do this manually since the files all exist in my NI install tree.

Finally, I've been able to install ethernet drivers (which don't specify an OS version requirement of 10.3)  - so the install process is working fine outside of the issue with BIOS update.

Best,

Jon

[barchij]

Forgot to mention - the BIOS update fails on both of our 8145RT controllers, but the other controller is only running BIOS 9.1 and is not as verbose in its boot output over serial. This suggests that it's not an issue with the controller, and I've tried numerous CF cards so that's not the issue either. It's clear that the system is finding the CF card, from the boot display and the fact that it is reading settings from NI-RT.ini.

I've been trying to do this over a direct cable connection with no internet access. Is that even possibly an issue?

[David_A]

barchij,

My colleague informed me today that you have service request 7311568 open with us about the same issue and that an email was sent to you today about how to go about this issue. I will defer to this service request as going through the service request route will be the best way to resolve the issue.

David A.

[barchij]

David,

That is correct - I opened the thread here after the service request emails went unanswered for a few days.

I still think this is an issue with MAX not creating a properly bootable image on the CF card for the firmware update, rather than any issue related to controller hardware.

Jon

[barchij · Accepted solution]

For anyone in a similar situation,

I ultimately decided to downgrade to LV2009 on my development machine and try things again. Using LV2009/LVRT2009/MAX4.6, I was able to successfully upgrade the BIOS version on both of my 8145RT controllers - one from 10.2 to 10.3, and one from 9.1 to 10.3. After this, I was able to install RT2009 + DaqMX + other needed components on the controller for which I had upgraded RAM and CF size. There is not a lot of memory to spare, but the controller does boot into LVRT(9.0/2009) and I've successfully deployed a test application on it.

My application may ultimately require an upgrade to faster hardware, but the 8145RT should still be a usable controller under LV2009 for simple tasks. I suspect LVRT2010 might work, now that I got the BIOS to upgrade, but I'm not inclined to test this right now.

As for the original issue of the BIOS update failing, I'm pretty sure this is a bug in MAX 4.7.  MAX 4.6 had no trouble initiating an update to the exact same version as 4.7 was trying (10.3); I suspect that MAX 4.7 did not properly set up the CF environment to boot into the flash update program.

Hope this helps someone,

Jon

[Michel_Gauvin]

Hello,

I'm interested  in knowing if the "SVE" (Shared Variables Engine) can run on a PXI-8145RT configured with LabVIEW 2009? My needs would be only a few boolean variables. Has anyone tried this with this configuration?

Thanks,

Michel

[Patricia B]

Hello,

The Shared Variable Engine and LV Real-Time 2009 is currently compatible with the PXI 8145, so the SVE should work fine. Below is a compatibility chart for your reference. 

What Version of LabVIEW Real-Time or LabWindows™/CVI Real-Time is Supported by My PXI Controller and Do I Need a Target CD?
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/C48FC4B99E3AFF85862574AB0074CCB5?OpenDocument

Best,

Patricia B.

[Luca_Nitopi]

Hallo!

I am doing the same upgrade work on a PXI 8145 -RT I have found that it is possible to use flash memory also bigger than 512M if a partition is made on them (First I made a 512M partition and than I format it FAT16 ) .

I Wonder if someone has a list of compatible drivers : On my PC I have LV from 7.1 to 11 and MAX  cannot suggest suitable drivers for a given LV version...

The only choice I Had was to install a version on a virtual machine and than upgrade/downgrade the controller from there (only one set of drivers is present in thet case).

Luca Nitopi