Why does it take 30 seconds for a real-time vi to "Open a FPGA Reference" ?

[Peter Halverson]

Hello,

We have a PXI system (controller is PXI-8187), running under ETS. We have in this system a 7831R fpga IO module. The host in this setup is a PC running windows 2000.

The problem is one of slow startup. When I start running a real-time vi on the PXI system, there is a pause of about 30 to 40 seconds, and then things work. The pause is not a fatal problem, but it is extremely annoying, after many days...

According to the Real-Time System Manager, the controller is not using any cpu during the pause (maybe 3% usage). Also, by using the "lightbulb" trace, I can see the the pause is in the "Open FPGA VI Reference". (FYI, this is a link to the vi that is on the FPGA module, which was seperately created with Labview FPGA.)

Any ideas as to what's going on? How to fix it?

Thanks,

Peter H.

[Arun_V]

Hello Peter,

This typically happens if you have more than one PXI system in your subnet and you have asked LabVIEW to ping everyone of them. To rectify it, please do the following;

1.Launch Measurement & Automation Explorer
2. Go to My System >> Software >> NI-VISA
3. Once you select NI-VISA go to VISA Options Tab and in 'Remote'make sure that you have selected only the PXI system in which you are running the code.

If you had selected more than one PXI system then LabVIEW waits for all the systems ro respond hence taking extra time. The sitaution becomes even worse if the systems are not online which means, LabVIEw has to wait till the timeout perios vefore going to the next system.

Regards,

Arun V
National Instruments

[Peter Halverson]

Hello Arun,

Thank you for the reply, but the situation is that the host computer and PXI crate are just connected to each other using an ethernet cross-over cable. So I'm still wondering why it is so slow to start up.

Actually, for some reason the startup time is down to 20 seconds now. I'm not sure why it changed, but I did have to completely reinstall all NI software after a crash...

Sincerely,

Peter H.