National Instruments PCI-8331 - Manual (Page 20)

Chapter 2 Hardware and Software Installation
MXI-4 Series User Manual 2-6 ni.com
Powering Up the MXI-4 System
1. Power on all of the expansion chassis in any order you choose.
2. Power on the host, which could either be a PC or a CompactPCI/PXI
chassis with an embedded controller.
Typical PCI-PCI bridges are used to add PCI devices to a PCI hierarchy in
which all the bridges and devices are contained within a single chassis.
Because of this, BIOSes and operating systems make the assumption that
all PCI devices in the entire hierarchy will be available as soon as code
execution begins at power-up time. This assumption means that all of the
expansion chassis must be turned on before the host PC or embedded
controller in order for the BIOS and OS to correctly configure a MXI-4
system.
Note There are no requirements on how MXI-4 expansion chassis are powered up relative
to each other, as long as they are all on before the BIOS begins execution.
Powering Down the MXI-4 System
Because operating systems and drivers commonly make the assumption
that PCI devices will be present in the system from power-up to
power-down, it is important not to power off the expansion chassis until
after the host PC or embedded controller is powered off. Powering the
expansion chassis off while the host is still on can cause crashes or hangs.
The order in which expansion chassis are turned off, relative to each other,
is not important.