Chapter 2 Hardware Installation
© National Instruments Corporation 2-5 MXI-Express (x1) for PXI Express Series User Manual
Powering Up the MXI-Express System
1. Power-on all of the expansion chassis in any order you choose.
2. Power-on the host.
Typical PCI-PCI bridges and switches are used to add PCI devices to a PCI
hierarchy in which all the bridges and devices are contained within a single
chassis. Because of this, BIOSes and operating systems make the
assumption that all PCI devices in the entire hierarchy will be available as
soon as code execution begins at power-up. This assumption means that all
of the expansion chassis must be turned on before the host PC for the BIOS
and OS to correctly configure a MXI-Express system.
Note There are no requirements on how MXI-Express expansion chassis are powered up
relative to each other, as long as they are all on before the computer is powered on.
Powering Down the MXI-Express System
Because operating systems and drivers commonly make the assumption
that PCI devices will be present in the system from power-up to
power-down, it is important to not power off the expansion chassis until
after the host PC is powered off. Powering off the expansion chassis while
the host is still on can cause crashes or hangs. The order in which expansion
chassis are powered off, relative to each other, is not important.