Red rocket pci slots problem

[ansongil]

I am working on putting together a couple of editing suites and I seem to have a problem with the PCI slots.

Computers are both Mac Pro 8 core with the slot 1&2 as x16 and slot 3&4 as x4.

The red rocket cards when out on a couple of shoot, when they came back the cards were responding in an awkward way.

The computers would read the red rocket as in a x4 slot but the card was placed in the x16 slot. If you turn off the computer a few times then back on the computer would recognize the card as x8 which is the appropriate speed for the red rocket card.

I rebuilt the entire mac pro system. Reinstalled both drivers. Build v1.3.2d and the firmware update 1.1.8.6.

The cards sometimes don't even read now, and if you turn of the computer it will read as x4 no longer at x8.

I wonder why this is, I even sent the computer to get checked to see if the PCI slots were broken or not. They said that the slots were fine.

I remember when one of the computers came back from the shoot it had the esata card inside. After I took that card the Red Rocket was responding properly as x8. Yet, now there are no other cards in just the Red rocket and it is not reading as x8.

If you have any idea why this is happening that would be great.

Anson

[Erich Ocean]

You could try rebuilding your KEXT cache. Open Terminal.app and do:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

And then reboot. That should rebuild them automatically. See http://developer.apple.com/mac/libra...xtcache.8.html for details.

[ansongil]

I tried it but seems it still is flaky and switches back and forth between x4 and x8.

Not sure what the reasoning is.

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Perhaps the motherboard was damaged somehow, electrically? Or you got faulty Rockets...

You'd should first try the Rockets on different systems.

[Dan Kanes]

Don't quote me on this - BUT -

I've noticed on ~SOME~ rocket cards that there is a 6 Pin Molex PCI-E video card power port (if you're facing the fan side of the card it's on the top right-ish.

Most contemporary PC power supplies have a PCI-E video card power cable like this, whereas most if not all mac pros lack this cable...

My belief is that this port should receive power in order to guarantee maximum stability and avoid voltage fluctuations coming through the PCI-e slot of the logic board.

You could maybe use something like this to provide power from the PSU if you have two open 4 pin molex:

http://alrightdeals.com/Item.htm?Id=...al.IDE___81385

Someone please correct me if this is not at all true - again - I have seen a revision of the rocket that lacks this 6 pin power port...so who knows.

a great way to avoid all this hassle pulling and reinserting rocket cards would be to get one of these:

http://maxxdigital.com/shop/index.php?cPath=147

But I know we're not all made of money (certainly not me)

dan