MXI-3 interface not detected?

Question

Hello to you all,
I was using PXI/PCI 8335 with PXI 1000B chassis. Everytime I run the MXI-3 optimization it says MXI-interface not detected.
I checked the LEDs.
For PXI-8335, the PWR and RX were both solid on, one green and the other orange. For PCI-8335, the PWR and TX (nor sure it's TX or RX, just the one in the same row with PWR) were both solid on, one green and the other orange.
No LINK light.
The whole system was powered in proper sequence and the fibre optic cable was fine.
So there seems to be something wrong with the cards.
I was wondering is there any way to know particularly which one of PXI-8335 and PCI-8335 doesn't work well without replacing them one by one, since I don't have any extras?
Like, does the LED tell other information except they are not linked?
Thank you in advance.
Yaqiong

Answer 1

Yaqiong,
In general you can't differentiate between a bad transmitter on one side or a bad receiver on the other, so it's often hard to tell which side is bad.
In your case, it sounds like one side or the other has a broken transceiver.  Power and RX on both sides means the boards aren't communicating at all, meaning a transceiver is bad, or a cable is bad in both directions, or a cable is not plugged in or is plugged in backwards.  If you power it up without a cable you should get the same LED behavior -- PWR and RX, the two LEDs next to each other.
If that's the case (same LEDs without a cable as with a cable), you should be able to tell which card is bad if you connect both ends of a half cable to one card (a loopback).  On a working card connecting RX to TX will "link" to itself according to the LEDs (at least it did for me on both the PCI and PXI card).  On a broken card you'll get something else.
- Robert