In LabVIEW7 the old serial VIs have been removed, the only option is to use VISA. So you could say that NI has answered the question for you; use VISA(!).
The old ones needed a driver, the driver was the 24KB file called serpdrv. If you included that tiny file in the same folder as the application everything would work fine. Some of us still use the old VIs, I for one moved them from my LV6 installation to LV7 and they still do the job.
VISA is nice, but requires VISA run-time engine to be installed. In LV7 the application builder allows you to just include support for the serial part of VISA and if you want to make the installer with the app builder these drivers are included almost transparently (the only thing you see of them is in the status window durin
g the installation; then you see National Instrument this...National Instrument that run across the screen). If you don't miss any of the functionality of VISA, use a third-party installer, want to save some MBs and don't like NI's name coming up during installation of your apps...you can stick to the old ones. It may become more and more difficult as time goes by though, now that NI does not support them anymore.
