Low power motherboard for Labview Real-Time

[Mnl]

I am looking for a low power platform for Labview Real-Time. I have done a lot of searching, but so far it has been very difficult finding low power motherboards with more than three PCI-slots.

I need the motherboard for control of prototype systems, and the system needs to run on 24 V DC (I already found a nice power supply on www.mini-box.com that will take anything between 8 and 30 Volts). As the system has to run on 24 VDC, the power requirements of the system is rather important, and I would like to keep it below 30 Watts.

I found and bought a very promising motherboard from Kontron, but unfortunately it seems that the motherboard isn’t capable of running Labview RT:

http://www.kontron-emea.com/index.php?id=226&cat=64&productid=489

No matter what I do, I get an error message saying that Labview is unable to configure the primary network controller, which sounds a lot like the error message mentioned under additional requirements in the official document on supported PC hardware:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/cb3434da94466dd286256e9e006bb775?OpenDocument 

I would like to know if anyone have some experience with using the Celeron or Pentium m processors for Labview Real-Time, and especially if anyone have found a working motherboard with four or more PCI-slots.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Morini]

Hi,

It seems that LV Real-Ttime Tragets dosen't support the 3xGbE LAN on the motherboard from Kontron(I can't see which chipset it has).

You can always get one PCI-ethernet instead with supported chipset, and still have 5 PCI-slots left.

Supported Ethernet Chipsets: A network adapter with a supported ethernet chipset is required. The adapter can be integrated to the motherboard or PCI.

• NI-PCI-8232 GPIB/Gigabit Ethernet
• Intel® 82540
• Intel® 82559
• Intel® 82558
• Intel® 82550
• Broadcom® 5751
  
  An example of a board that carries the Intel® 82540 chipset is the NI-PCI-8232 GPIB/Gigabit Ethernet.
  An example of a commercially available board that carries the 82550 chipset is the Intel Pro/100 S.

Regards

[Mnl]

Hi Morini

Thank you for your answer.

Unfortunately I forgot to mention that I already tried the Intel Pro/100S, and Labview still can't detect it. I actually tried two different ethernet adapters, just in case one of them should be out of order.

BTW - the onboard LAN is Realtek, so it is definately not supported.

[Morini]

Hi,

Have you disabled the onboard networkcard and USB support from the Bios?

Regards

[Mnl]

Yes, I have tried disabling both onboard LAN,  USB and serial and parallel ports.

[Morini]

Well, if you have followed the steps mentioned in http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/cb3434da94466dd286256e9e006bb775?OpenDocument and it still doesn't work, then it seems that we have a hardware compatiblity issue here.

Maybe you have to choose another motherboard to work with, however if you still want to use the Kontron motherboard, I can escalate your problem to our specialists and they will have a look at this problem.

Regards

[Mnl]

I did follow all the steps mentioned in that document, so I am afraid it might be a hardware compatibility issue (actually as I already mentioned, it might be the issue listed under Additional requirements in the document). I would be most thankfull if you would pass the issue on to your experts, as I haven't been able to find a low power motherboard with as many PCI slots.

If I could only find a similar motherboard I wouldn't mind using that either.

[Morini]

Hi, your question has been escalated.

There is one more thing, which processor are you using on the Kontron motherboard?

Regards  

[preston_johnson]

You might consider

This is a very good candidate

– it is in mini-ITX format (about 7" x 7"), low-power, has one standard PCI slot, and Intel 82551 Ethernet chipset: http://www.ampro.com/html/MightyBoard_800.html

[Mnl]

I am using a pentium m, 1.8 GHz, 478 µFC-PGA, from Intels embedded processor line.

@Preston: thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I can't do with just one PCI slot, as I need at least three for my data acquisition cards plus one for the ethernet card. It is very nice that it has the right ethernet chipset onboard though - if only it had two more PCI slots it would be perfect.