Optiplex models, will not boot with 3rd party PCIe 1.1 cards

Newer versions of PCI-E bus aka 3.0 are not backwards compatible to PCI-E 1.0 and 2.0 chipsets.  You did not say what the card was or what chipset is on the card.  PCI-E tv tuners and Storage cards are NOT SUPPORTED for 35 years.  We is who?  What cards? Dell does not make your card and therefore will not likely investigate. The Voltage and Bus Speed environment is quite Different with PCI-E 2.1 and 3.0 and 4.0

Like with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, 1.0/1.0a.  we can expect incompatibility with certain mainboards supporting PCI Express  2.1 / 3.0

Conventional PCI 2.0 also dropped support for 5v signaling requiring 3.3v UNIVERSAL PCI 2.2 or higher.

Vendors are not going to support old slow cards designed in 2004 and down-clock all the bus to PCI-E 1.0 speed.

The other issue is Line Protocol completely changed. This will not be modified to acommodate vacuuum tube cards.

Eventually everything will be Class 3 Bios in which case your cards will stop working altogether because CSM will be removed entirely.

PCI Express 2.1 / 3.0 changes the Line Code to 128b/130b from the previous 8b/10b encoding. It also changes the Bus Timing and Power. Most chipsets also dropped support for 5v signaling and timing back to conventional PCI 2.0 in favor of PCI 2.2 or higher.  PCI-E 3.0 was finalized in 2010 and its now 2018.  You cannot keep the same design and expect that chipset and motherboard etc will support you for 35 years.

CSM and CLASS 2.31 VS 3

The daughter card is PCIe 1.1 but that should not be problematic because PCIe 3.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible. And if this were a mere compatibility problem, why does this hang UEFI while it does not hang BIOS.

I suspect a bug in Optiplex' UEFI firmware.

"The daughter card is PCIe 1.1 but that should not be problematic because PCIe 3.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible."

This is not the case.  The Line Code is 128b/130b on 3.0 and 2.1  The Line Code is 8b/10b  on 2.0 and 1.1 

This is a line code that maps 8-bit words to 10-bit symbols.  The voltages and power are not the same as well as the bus timing being 400 percent slower on PCI-E  2.0 and 1.1

PCI-E 2.1 came out in 2008 and its now 2018.

PCI-E 1.0a in 2003 and 1.1 back to 2005 is no longer supported and not compatible.

They also added to the Root Complex which BIOS enumeration functions to validate OS and conventional PCI2.3 compatibility which is 3.3v signaling only.

http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/compliance/compliance_library

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@speedstep wrote:

 

This is a line code that maps 8-bit words to 10-bit symbols.  The voltages and power are not the same as well as the bus timing being 400 percent slower on PCI-E  2.0 and 1.1

 

 

 

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We used to run into this "PCIe Addin Card incompatibility" issue quite-a-bit back in the old-days (like as of 6 years ago).  :Smile:  I think anyone who spent any real amount of time "in the field" did.

Luckily, since Legacy (Parallel and Serial) ports are fully depreciated these days, and most machines have USB-3.0 ports and nice NICs built-in now ... it's very rare to have a use-case that requires it any more.

There are also newer designs for PCI-E cards that bring legacy Serial and Parallel back.  StarTech.com 2 Port Native PCI Express RS232 Serial Adapter Card with 16550
Mfg.Part: PEX2S553 CHIPSET ASIX - MCS9922CV-AA

http://www.asix.com.tw/FrootAttach/brief/MCS9922_Brief.pdf

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=nbbg&cs=canbbg&sku=a4220812

The PEX2S553 PCI Express serial card lets you turn a PCI Express slot into 2 RS232 (DB9) serial ports. Based on a native single chip design (no bridge chip), this 2-port serial adapter card allows you to harness the full capability offered by PCI Express (PCIe), and reducing the load applied to the CPU by as much as 48% over conventional serial cards.The RS232 Serial Adapter Card is compatible with a broad range of operating systems including Windows® 2000/XP/2003/Vista™/Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 (32 and 64 bit), Linux Kernel 2.6.11 and up, and MAC OS 10.4 and above.Plus, the serial card includes an optional half-height/low profile bracket that allows the card to be installed in any PCI Express slot, regardless of the size of the computer case.


Manufacturer Part# : PEX2S553
Dell Part# : A4220812

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@speedstep wrote:

There are also newer designs for PCI-E cards that bring legacy Serial and Parallel back.  StarTech.com 2 Port Native PCI Express RS232 Serial Adapter Card with 16550
Mfg.Part: PEX2S553 CHIPSET ASIX - MCS9922CV-AA

 

 

Yes, that looks like a nice (new) one.

Yes, newer cards seem to work. But bringing-forward an old card into a new machine (just because it fits into the PCIe slot) often DOES NOT.

If the "PCIe Compatibility Issue" above doesn't get you, lack of Windows-10 (or 64bit) drivers will.

This is why many thousands PCI-E X1 and X4 of storage controllers,  sound cards, TV Tuner cards,  etc DO NOT work and ARE NOT SUPPORTED on newer machines.  The line code issue is not trivial and has issues both ways.  Thats why ancient Dells like the Precision 490 and 690 do not work with newer cards.

How about this. We have two exactly the same Optiplex 3040, each with two Pex2s553 dual port cards.

Those are Pcie 1x version 1.0a. We purchased those at the same time. One is in production and works OK. The other spare does not recognize the cards at all. We tested cards in Optiplex 780. They are OK. We tested PCIe slots in 3040 with different cards. Slots are OK.

So what gives ?

Now that's bizzarre.

Thx