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Dialogic® Brooktrout® TR1034 Fax Boards - more articles

Driver Unable to Communicate with PCI Express Boards in Dell PowerEdge T110x and R210x

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide information about an issue concerning PCIe versions of Dialogic® Brooktrout® TR1034  (TR1034) boards and Dialogic® Brooktrout® Trufax (Trufax) boards when installed in Dell PowerEdge T110 or R210 chassis.

Issue/Symptoms

In general, PCIe versions of TR1034 boards and Trufax boards cannot communicate with the Dialogic’s driver when the boards are installed in the Dell PowerEdge T110 or R210.

The specific symptoms of this issue can vary depending on the particular fax board being used. PCIe T1/E1 TR1034 boards will be recognized by the driver and will appear if the user executes the modinfo utility, but the driver cannot pass data to the fax board (e.g., cannot load firmware to the board). For other versions of PCIe TR1034 boards or Trufax boards, the driver is not able to recognize the board and thus the board will not appear when using the modinfo utility.

Root Cause

Root cause has been linked to the TR1034 board and TruFax board identifier that is used for communication across the PCIe bus being overwritten by Dell-specific information. Specifically, the subsystem vendor ID and the device ID of the TR1034 boards and TruFax boards are being changed. The subsystem vendor ID and the device ID (among other values) are information that the TR1034 boards and TruFax boards put onto the PCIe bus to identify themselves. Because this information is changed on the host machine, the information is not recognized by the driver, and communication between board and driver cannot occur.

Solution

Dell has released a BIOS, version 2.1.2, that addresses this issue.  As of November 2012, the BIOS could be downloaded from these links:

T110 II Link: PowerEdge T110 II, BIOS, 2.1.2

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails?driverId=YF1GV

R210 II Link: PowerEdge R210 II, BIOS, 2.1.2

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails?driverId=YFWXP