Chapter 2 Hardware Installation
© National Instruments Corporation 2-5 MXI-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 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 time. 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 not to 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.