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acowan1057

3 Posts

7260

February 3rd, 2006 14:00

PE6400 USB2.0 PCI Card

Hi folks,
I've searched Google, Dell support & technical documents and these forums to try and find an answer to this issue but no luck so far.
 
Basically, I'm trying to insert a 32bit, 5volt, 33Mhz USB2.0 card into PCI1 (or PCI2) of the PE 6400's system board. When I insert a gigabit NIC card into the slot, it works fine, and when I insert the USB card into another system, it also works fine. I've read articles about different voltage settings, 32bit cards not being totally compatible with 64bit slots, I've upgraded all ESM/RAID/BIOS firmware, I'm using the latest drivers, I've tried using the Resource Configuration Utility (RCU), everything I can think of I've tried.
 
I've tried two PCI cards:
and
http://firewire.adaptec.com/AUA-3020.html - more expense Adaptec Dual FW/USB2.0 card
 
Neither of which work. The HotSwap light just doesn't light up, it's like the system think's the slots physically empty, even when I run the RCU it displays the slot as empty. When I view free resources, there are no items listed in the Interrupt box but there are in other resource types, could this indicated a lack of free resources or a conflict? I've tried taking all other cards out, with no luck (this actually killed my RAID arrays - twice, 4 or 5 disks dropped out on the next power up - thankfully I only have the OS installed - MS Windows 2000 Server SP4).
 
I've called Dell support but the guy didn't seem to have much information apart from the PCI slot types, which I already knew. I've spoken to a Dell engineer who also didn't have any ideas. Has anyone had any problems with this before? I need to get this USB2.0 card in for backup purposes, the sooner the better. Does anyone even know where I could find the pure technical specs/white papers etc for the system board? Even if I could find out which PCI standard the board conforms to that'd be of some help, eg. PCI 2.1,2.2,2.3.
 
If anyone has any extra information, it'd be very much appreciated.
 
Thanks in advance,
Alistair Cowan
Kainos Software Ltd
 
 

tech9996

6 Posts

February 6th, 2006 08:00

I will see how i cld help. I shd be back to you with a solution or at least the white paper of spec in a day or two
 

speedstep

11 Legend

 • 

47K Posts

February 8th, 2006 15:00

There is a hardware conflict between the PERC and ALL USB cards. It cannot be overcome. If you remove the PERC card the usb cards can be "seen" otherwise not.

64 bit slots are PCI 2.3 and not compatable with 5v signaling.

Revision 2.3 is a huge change to the PCI Local Bus Specification. Revision 2.3 makes a significant step in migrating the PCI bus from the original 5.0 volt signaling to a 3.3 volt signaling bus. Revision 2.3 supports the 5V and 3.3V keyed system board connectors (as did revision 2.2) but revision 2.3 supports only the 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards. The 5V keyed add-in card is not supported in revision 2.3. PCI 66, PCI-X, Mini PCI, and Low Profile PCI support only 3.3 volt signaling on 3.3V keyed system board connectors and 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards.

High performance technologies power the logic within the chips with 3.3 or lower voltages. The newer high performance technologies cannot support 5 volt compatible signaling on the off-chip drivers. As a result, the host bridge needs to migrate to 3.3 volt signaling with 3.3V keyed system board connectors. Removing support for 5V keyed add-in cards is the first step in the migration to 3.3 volt signaling systems and ensures revision 2.3 compliant add-in cards will be usable in 3.3V keyed system board connectors.

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