Nathan Durnan

Thank you @Fausto. My BIOS on these systems were already set to Legacy, UEFI is OFF, and Secure Boot is disabled. This happens on multiple machines. We have standardized our lab on specific computer builds, so I don't have a lot of variation of hardware to test with. Although we do have a few different generations of hardware due to the vendor discontinuing our original motherboard hardware. Testing on some other more recently purchased machines, the issue does not appear to be present on the newer models. This is a little surprising since I would expect newer hardware to be less compatible with older DT boards, not better. The other possible contributing factors may be newer BIOS in the more recent machines, or newer Windows10 Updates applied in the newer machines. None of the older machines that exhibit the failure behavior have had any Windows Updates applied since they were put into service (over 5 years on some) since they are all behind a stand-alone test network VLAN with no internet access. For reference, the systems I am having issues with are using Intel i3-4330 (LGA1150) based systems. The ones that are working normally are i3-6100/8100/9100 (LGA1151) based systems. Is there any chance that the older systems are crashing because of missing Windows Updates? This seems unlikely since the DT QuickDataAcq app would've been written well before any recent updates, but maybe a more recent update could've fixed a legacy compatibility thing? Or is it more likely a hardware/BIOS layer thing?

I am getting a "Page fault in non-paged area" blue-screen crash referencing the DT3010k.sys driver component whenever I run a buffered DAC waveform for an extended period of time. Depending on the frequency, it can happen after a very short time. To eliminate my software potentially contributing to the issue, I went back and ran just the QuickDataAcq app that comes installed with the Data Translation Open Layers 7.8.2 installer. I just loaded it up, went to the Wave Generator window, selected my board, and started the waveform with the default parameters. After anywhere from 10 minutes to as short as 30 seconds the computer will blue-screen. I have tried this on different machines with either a DT3010 or DT3034 installed. It is not tied to a specific machine or board. It happens on all my machines with either board. All the machines are running Windows10 64-bit, but are isolated test machines with no internet access, so are not up to date on Windows updates and have varying builds/patches of Win10 depending on when they were put into service. Any clue where to look to try to resolve this issue?

Our existing test systems utilize the digital outputs on the DataTranslation DT3010/3034 and DT332/334 boards to control hydraulic test equipment hardware (typically turning on and off hydraulic solenoid valves thru an electrical relay interface (e.g. OPTO22 ODC5R modules in a PB16T rack)). On older computers (off-the-shelf HP and Dell machines running WinXP thru Win10), these DT boards always used to power up with the digital outputs in an “OFF” state before the computer even logged on or any software even attempted to talk to the boards. So all the relays/solenoids were de-energized (safe state) when the computer first turns on. As old computers have died, we have replaced them with newer industrial models (different motherboards/BIOS), but have started experiencing undesired startup states from the DT boards. The digital IO no longer powers up in a safe OFF state, but instead in a random (high-impedance?) state that causes some of the relays/solenoids to randomly turn on when the computer first powers up. At best, this leads to solenoids being powered up unexpectedly and left on for days at a time, potentially burning up the solenoid coils. At worst, this can result in dangerous unexpected energization of hydraulic test equipment when the computer powers up. We have not been able to figure out what the difference is between the older computers and the newer replacements that could possibly affect how the DT boards are initialized when the computer first boots up (no software running yet). It doesn’t seem to matter if we’re using the DT3010 vs DT3034, or DT332 vs DT334. Some questions I hope MC can help answer: Are there DT board configuration settings we should be looking at? Are there potential BIOS settings that could affect how the DT board digital IO is initialized? Does MC have recommended computers or motherboard/BIOS combinations for running these older DT boards so they power up with the digital IO in a safe OFF state?