RE: SBS VIPC616 IP Carrier

["Mark Rivers" <rivers@cars.uchicago.edu>]

Ned,

> We are experiencing some unusual behavior in an ioc with an AB 6008 
> scanner and a SBS VIPC616 IP Carrier. We also remember some 
> rumors about the VIPC616 IP carrier board not playing nicely with
other 
> VME cards in the same crate. Advice such as "make sure it is to the
left of the AB 
> Scanner" has been informally distributed, but has not resolved this 
> problem.

I have 7 IOCs with VIPC616 IP carriers, and one that also has the AB
6008 scanner.  That IOC has had no problems with the two modules both
installed.  By chance the VIPC616 is to the left of the AB scanner, we
never tried it the other way.  Several of my IOCs have 2 VIPC616 boards
installed.

The only problems that I have seen:

- If we use the SBS IP-488 GPIB IP module, then we get frequent error
messages about uninitialized interrupts when we talk over the GPIB.

- I recently tried a configuration with 2 SBS IP-Octals (RS-232
modules), each in IP Slot A on each of 2 VIPC616 modules.  This led to
"Work queue panic overflow" and reboot of the IOC each time I booted.
It could be a problem with my configuration script, but I don't think
so.  Moving the second IP-Octal module into Slot D on the first VIPC616
worked around the problem.  It's on my list of problems to track down.

Mark Rivers