PLX Technology 9030 question

[Jay W.]

Hello, we've recently uprevved our board design from PLX Technology's 9050
chip to the 9030 chip. For production purposes in the past, our test dept.
programmed the serial EEPROM using the "read" function in the MS-DOS based
Plxmon.exe supplied by PLX Technology. However, this tool no longer works
with the newer 9030 chip. Does anyone have any utility to program the
serial EEPROM in-circuit in an MS-DOS environment?

Thank you.

 

[Carter Buck]

Hello Jay,

The 9050 uses a 1K EEPROM, while the 9030 uses a 2K or 4K EEPROM.
PLXMon (DOS) only supports a 1K EEPROM.

PLXMon (Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP), or PlxCm (Linux), both included in
our SDK, can program the serial EEPROM. PlxCm doesn't support the
PlxMon (DOS) "read" command, however you can copy/paste the "eep"
commands from your PLXMon (DOS) file into the PlxCm command line.
PlxCm also runs under Windows, using the Windows drivers included in
the SDK. The SDK includes PlxCm application source only; if you need
a compiled executable to run under Windows, we can provide that to you
separately since you have an SDK license (we sent SDK v4.1-beta to
your colleague Walter last week).

To program the EEPROM under DOS, since your company is an established
PLX customer we can provide our PciTest utility (similar to PlxCm) to
perform this task. Your company may request this by clicking the "Ask
a Question" button on the PLX Knowledge Base (registered users only)
linked from our Support page.

Regards,

Carter Buck
Technical Applications Engineer
PLX Technology, Inc.
http://www.plxtech.com

 

[GPE]

Gee...
It'd be nice if AMCC had such customer service... seems like they completed
their S5935 PCI interface.... and maybe fled the country? Don't see any new
parts from them down the road and their software only runs in DOS... argh!!
I can expect we'll be saying "goodbye" to AMCC soon.

-- Ed

 

[Paul Burke]

Gee...
It'd be nice if AMCC had such customer service... seems like they
completed
their S5935 PCI interface.... and maybe fled the country? Don't see
any new
parts from them down the road and their software only runs in DOS...
argh!!
I can expect we'll be saying "goodbye" to AMCC soon.

Time for a plug for PLX- just as a happy customer. Their support is
brilliant, and even the most stupid and trivial quibbles are answered
promptly and courteously.

Paul Burke

 

[nospam]

Time for a plug for PLX- just as a happy customer. Their support is
brilliant, and even the most stupid and trivial quibbles are answered
promptly and courteously.

I second that.

 

[Jay W.]

Hello Jay,

The 9050 uses a 1K EEPROM, while the 9030 uses a 2K or 4K EEPROM.
PLXMon (DOS) only supports a 1K EEPROM.

PLXMon (Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP), or PlxCm (Linux), both included in
our SDK, can program the serial EEPROM. PlxCm doesn't support the
PlxMon (DOS) "read" command, however you can copy/paste the "eep"
commands from your PLXMon (DOS) file into the PlxCm command line.
PlxCm also runs under Windows, using the Windows drivers included in
the SDK. The SDK includes PlxCm application source only; if you need
a compiled executable to run under Windows, we can provide that to you
separately since you have an SDK license (we sent SDK v4.1-beta to
your colleague Walter last week).

Yes, we have the Windows SDK, and have successfully used that for the
prototypes, but as the diagnostic is a MS-DOS based app, and communicates
with the hardware directly, it requires us to first boot into Windows to
program the EEPROM, individually program each board, and about fifty mouse
clicks later shutdown and boot to DOS. A rather time consuming and tedious
task for production purposes. For the older 9050 based boards, we have a
DOS macro that programs all 10 boards at once automatically using the
'eep' commands, then resets the system and runs the diagnostic.

To program the EEPROM under DOS, since your company is an established
PLX customer we can provide our PciTest utility (similar to PlxCm) to
perform this task. Your company may request this by clicking the "Ask
a Question" button on the PLX Knowledge Base (registered users only)
linked from our Support page.

Thanks Carter. I'll give your suggestion a try. I must say, I never
expected to talk to a PLX Engineer on Usenet - *That's* what I call tech
support!

Best regards,

JW