I am not having any luck finding a recommended method for removing a connector from a CPCI card. These solderless connectors get used on CPCI boards.
I have a board which has its P3,P4,P5 connectors populated which interfere with the host controller. I need to at least remove P3 and P5. Can anyone point me in the right direction for removing them without damaging the card? Is it as simple as supporting the board and gently prying up the connector?
Mark
You can chase from that page to the following probably unusable URL
"Tools for removing connectors from pc boards are provided in Section 5, TOOLING."
but close inspection of Section 5 reveals nothing labeled "removal".
However, section 2.6, PDF page 6, of that document, refers to
- there are other documents for other styles, but I'm pretty sure you are interested in this one, as the CPCI boards I've seen tend to have female connectors.
Punching that document number in to te.com yields another unusable URL
Reading between the lines a little, that tool might only be in charge of getting the plastic housing off of the pins, leaving you to pluck the pins out of the circuit board, either one by one, or all at once with some other tool. But I'm only about 50% sure on that.
te.com's distributor stock page doesn't work for me. Mouser lists that TE part number as a non-stock item, 9 weeks lead time, for the amazingly low price of US$6,144.34 .
A workaround for this is to use a card extender. Hartmann sells very nice ones in both 3U and 6U; I've used the 6U one and it worked. I was told it cost a couple of thousand dollars.
Twin Industries also sells simpler ones in at least 3U for around $300. Note that if you have 6U cards, their 3U extender will only work for the "standard" CPCI half; if you plug it into the "user defined" CPCI half, strange things can happen. I've held one of the Twin extenders in my hand, and it seemed to be decent quality, but I couldn't use it in the system because of that issue.
You might also ping your card or backplane vendor; they may have advice or be willing to lend you the tool if you do enough business with them.
Standard disclaimers apply: I don't get money or other consideration from any companies mentioned.
Matt Roberds
Matt you are awesome! I don't know what it is, some days it seems like I can't get the right keywords into google, or I am just blind when following the links on the manufacture's site.
This is funny problem I have run into many times before. Anyone who reads this thread need to ALWAYS remember to match up a card's signal routing to that of the backplane , host controller and any other cards. It's not always/never plug and play. A couple years back I wrote a PXI subsystem spec for an Adlink CPCI backplane so that you could use certain NI digitizers in it, and run some signals out the rear connectors. I posted it in the NI forum with a similar disclaimer. I got so many PMs with people plugging random crap together with all sorts of overlapping backplane IO connections, it was ridiculous. My solution for this project, is just to rip out the overlapping connections, as I don't need the IO anyway.
Well this is just a weekend fun project with eBay junk. I already know the vendor is not going to give me a second of support for this. They know I keep buying their products from ebay for 1/100 the cost and bringing them to life ;-) As a side note, I will never buy one of their products for work because of this. A number of COTS vendors don't mind where you get their hardware and assume, rightly so, that I will buy more of it, if they do offer 'some' level of support. National Instruments, Data Translation, General Standards, Technobox, Agilent, GE, and even R&S to some extent: Thank you so much; I continue to develop software for and recommend your products to others.
Thanks, Mark
I ran into this when looking at single-board computers for CPCI. The power, ground, and PCI bus connections are always in the same place, but every other useful thing - USB, Ethernet, serial, parallel, audio - is in a random and variable place. As time goes on, a few of these things are getting standardized (PICMG 2.16 says where a couple of the Ethernet connections should go) but there are still a lot of variations.
I think part of the problem is that the actual CPCI spec is a secret. The spec is not cheap, they charge more for electronic copies, and they come with dire warnings about copying them. Large and medium vendors have no problem just buying the specs, but I think some smaller ones design CPCI cards and backplanes according to the first couple of Google hits.
Another part of it is that people are used to plugging several different PCI cards into a PC and having them Just Work[tm], so they expect the same thing from CPCI - it's just PCI with a funny connector, right?
I agree. If I bought it on Ebay, I wouldn't expect to talk to their applications engineer for an hour on the phone, but being able to download manuals, drivers, relevant FAQs and technical notes, etc without jumping through hoops is always a plus.
Matt Roberds
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