Windows OS Freezes when PC104+ Serial card installed

NTDEV
1

Sorry all, This is a second post regarding the same FSCC card

I would like to determine whether each Windows freeze has been caused be a hardware problem or a driver software problem

I Have found that a PIP22 Industrial PC Box freezes with the Commtech PC104+ Super FSCC card installed; this is the only PC104/PC104+ card installed there is no termination block.

As far as I can remember this has not happened without the device drivers installed

Windows has frozen when no program has opened the device but happens a lot more quickly when the FSCC ports are sending & receiving frames.

Windows 7 x86 fails quickly Windows 7 x64 took one night, my Windows 7 x64 checked
did not fail, but I only had it running 24 hours.

When windows freezes, no logs are created, the mouse and keyboard freeze, and the only thing that can be done is to reset the power.

I need to try a bit with Null-Modem Windbg, since I have not used it since I have fixed a WriteFile/Overlapped structure bug a few days ago (previous post).

Best Wishes again Nick.

2

Hi Nick:

This sounds a lot like a PC104+ bus transaction is hung. The easiest way to
observe if this is the case is to have a PCI bus analyzer connected.
Failing that you may be able to find out the state of some key signals like
IRDY#, TRDY#, STOP# and PERR# with a oscilloscope, and refering to a
transaction waveform diagram. This is more risky then the bus analyzer and
requires a good deal of care and attention.

Also you could try elevating the temperature of the system or provide more
cooling to determine if the failure can be induced more quickly.

Regards
Phil

3

Thankyou Phil

4

This might also be a screw up in the PCI bus interrupt routing in the BIOS.
What slot position are you using on the card ? Are there other cards in the stack?

Tony