Hardware Tools: A PCI Odyssey

Prologue: Please forgive me for the “sales pitch” tone of this entry. It’s the nature of the items I’m describing.

In this industry, we hear a lot about software tools – compilers, syntax checkers, ides and editors, verification utilities, linkers, pre-processors, you name it. But the realm of hardware tools is often enshrouded in mysterious clouds of black magic.

About 6 months ago I changed jobs; I moved from a software company (Novell) to an up-and-coming hardware company in Salt Lake City. I still write software, but now I write driver and utility code designed to support our hardware devices. Recently, I found myself wishing for a way to add, swap, and remove PCI cards from my desktop Linux machine without having to power down the system.

I’m always updating the firmware in my test unit, so it would also be nice to reboot a PCI card without rebooting the entire system. Linux is a pretty fast boot, but it’s annoying to have to do it several times a day, even when the process is reasonably quick.

Finally, it would be nice to be able to plug a PCI device into my laptop so I can more effectively work at home. When I first started with my current employer, I didn’t think these goals were possible, but I’ve since gained some insight which indicates that my original thoughts were in ignorance.

I had occasion to chat with one of our test lab staff members a couple of months ago for the first time. While there, I watched him plug my company test device into a bare card with a PCI slot sitting on his desk. A glance at the back side of this card revealed a cable that went into the back of his computer on the floor. The card was also powered by an external ATX power supply which he switched off before connecting or disconnecting the PCI device.

Cool! A way to hot-swap cards without rebooting. However, my hopes were dashed when he told me that the setup cost nearly 1000 dollars. Despite being the new kid in town, I probably had enough clout to ask for such a setup at my desk, but I just couldn’t justify it emotionally. My lab friend uses it all the time. In fact he swaps cards so often that he uses a disposable “slot saver” – a sort of cheap “extension cord” for his PCI slot to keep the base slot from wearing out.

Well, that was that – or was it? I opened up my browser and began to google for PCI external, extender, adapter, tools – whatever I could think of. No luck. I couldn’t even find the company that makes the tools we already use in our labs. It’s interesting how little advertising hardware companies do – I believe they probably rely on word of mouth more than anything else. Apparently that works for them, but it wasn’t working for me.

Then another friend sent me a link to a company in Shanghai called Shanghai BPlus Electronics Technology Ltd. BPlus (a bad name from an American culture perspective – why not APlus?) sells something similar to the card I saw in our lab, but it costs less than 100 dollars and it’s more functional.

They have 3 distributors, one in Canada, one in Japan, and the one I found in Taiwan at http://www.hwtools.net. (Don’t omit the “www” unless you can read Chinese.) BPlus’s marketing literature indicates they have sales contracts with Intel, HP, DELL, and PLX, so they’re not likely going under anytime soon.

The configuration I bought was a PCI passive adapter – the PE4H. BPlus purposely designs modular components so they can be used in a mix-and-match fashion. This saves money and increases the usefulness of the devices they make.

The PE4H is sold in several configurations, one of which includes an ExpressCard adapter for your laptop. I have a Lenovo W510, which has an ExpressCard slot built into it. This option comes with the passive adapter – a card with a smooth bottom that sits flat on your desktop, an ExpressCard adapter, and a mini HDMI cable that connects the two parts. It also comes with an external 5V/12V power supply cable and a SWEX adapter – an ATX power supply power-on switch.

This is everything you need to connect a PCI card to your laptop. Here’s the best part: It’s 85 dollars US, plus about 20 dollars shipping from Taiwan – probably cheaper if you can figure out who the Canadian distributor is.

The ExpressCard interface only supports a single PCI link lane, so if your device requires more lanes then this configuration won’t work for you. However, if all you want is an external PCI adapter with hot-swap capability, then the PE4H will still work for you. You’ll just need to buy a different option. In this case, purchase the option with the PCIe 1X passive adapter, HP4A (115USD + shipping). This card has 4 mini HDMI connectors that allow you to connect up to 4 link lanes between your PC’s PCI bus and the PE4H card on your desktop. The cables that come with it are only 30cm in length, so I’d also buy 4 100cm cables (10USD each).

I mentioned above that the device can be powered using an external ATX power supply, but it can also be powered using a simple 15-20 VDC laptop adapter. In fact, it’s power requirements are very flexible. It can handle anything between 15 and 20 volts, AC or DC, at either polarity, as long as it supplies at least 3 amps. I bought a 15 VDC, 6A power brick on eBay for 10 bucks. I had to replace the “Q” class coaxial power plug with an “N” class power plug I bought at Radio Shack. If you can find a power brick that supplies exactly 3 amps, you might find it already comes with the smaller “N” class plug.

You can purchase one of the option packages described above, but you can also purchase each component individually. I purchased the ExpressCard option package, and then the HP4A (and long cables) separately. Total bill: 215 dollars, and the frosting on the cake is that I can connect to my laptop also. Now that’s a price anyone’s manager would be okay with!