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NI488.2 version 2.52 - Win16 and DOS support under Vista?????

Hi,
 I'm supporting a 16 bit Windows program that uses GPIB and now I see that support for MS-DOS and 16 bit windows programs seems to have been cut from the driver when operating under Windows Vista.
Except from the readme file for the 2.52 driver:
Win16 and DOS support are not available on Windows Vista and later operating systems.

Will it be implemented later on or is this final?
NI has always had a big star with me because of the backwards compatibility why the sudden change?
Microsoft will soon stop selling Windows XP and then what will I do - we were planning on running this program for many years.
I think this is a big problem - am I missing something here?

Kind regards
Morten
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Hello Morten,

Unfortunately, Win16 and DOS support is something that is being dropped in Windows VISTA x64.  This is a direction that Microsoft is going (I found this interesting because Microsoft is also known for its backwards compatibility).  Since Microsoft has announced that Vista is the last 32 bit operating system they will release, this support will not be added to future operating systems by Microsoft.

Also, most of the GPIB interfaces have not been supported in the later versions of Windows.  PCII/IIA has not been supported since Windows 98 and ME.  The only exception has been the AT-GPIB/TNT which can run on Windows XP and 2000 with NI-488.2 version 1.7.  The time has probably come to refactor and recompile the source code for this Win16 executable.

On a side note, I am curious about the computer you are using.  I was not aware of any Windows Vista compatible computers with ISA slots.

I hope this helps explain what happened to the support.

Steven T.

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Hi Steven,

The program run fine on any windows computer, so we don't need any ISA slots - we normally use a USB or PCI GPIB adapter.
I can understand that support for Win16 can be dropped AFTER Vista if that's the last 32 bit operating system from MS, but that's not an argument from dropping it FROM Vista ???
I'm afraid it's not just a question of recompiling the source as 32 bits - the program is actually 3-4 programs written in a mixture of pascal and C++ and the inter-program communication is based on windows messages and that can not be ported to 32 bits because 32 bit programs can't see each other and so can't send each other messages. This means that I will have to rethink the whole program stuff, we have estimated this is a task of about 2 man-years so we would wery much like to avoid this !

So we are in a bad spot when we can't get Win XP as of summer 2008.

Morten
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Hi Morten,

I did some research on the web and found some conflicting statements about whether 16bit app & Dos app are supported in Vista32. I presume you are using Vista32.

But one thing everybody seems to agree on, is that Vista64 doesn't support 16bit app, and if you have any older 16-bit applications, Vista(32 or 64) won’t support them natively. The Enterprise edition of Vista will include Virtual PC Express, which can run 16-bit applications in emulation. Although it doesn’t support 8-bit (DOS) applications, a third-party system such as DOSBox (dosbox.sourceforge.net) gives you a way to run them.

I think you should give it a try and let me know if it works.

Thanks!

 

-----------------------------------------------------
Dennis Morini
District Sales Manager
National Instruments Denmark
http://www.ni.com/ask
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Hi Dennis,

Yes I'm trying to get the programs to run under Vista32, and the problem is that the driver does not install the 16 bit interface dll GPIB.DLL that normally provides the point for 16 bit windows programs to attach, and the dll will then go ahead and call the 32 bit dll (GPIB_32:DLL) for the 16 bit program.
This makes me think that perhaps I can just take GPIB.DLL and GPIB.INI from an older driver (or perhaps better from 2.52 installed under XP) and stuff them into C:\WIindows\System32 where they are normally installed??
Do you think that would work?
Or have NI dropped it because there's some problem? (If so perhaps I could work around it? - if it's just some specific function calls that don't work)

The Virtual PC solution would still require that I had a version of Windows XP - is that not so?
My whole problem is that MS stops selling that in 8 months or so, othervise I could just keep running under XP (at least for a couple of years until MS stops support for XP).

Thanks
Morten
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Hello,

we are having the same problem with NI488.2 Version 2.5 and Vista x86. I don't understand why NI has drop the support of the 16-Bit applications for Vista x86, when Microsoft is there still supporting 16-Bit applications.

We always told our customer to use NI because of the very good support in the last time of all operation system. Is this now gone ?

I think a lot of developper will come in trouble the next year with this decision from NI. Please give ous a solution ?

Best regards

Andreas Lindenthal

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Morten,

You are trying to assign the NI-488.2 16bit driver in Vista32 manually, can you give me a feedback on how are things working out for you?

Thanks!

-----------------------------------------------------
Dennis Morini
District Sales Manager
National Instruments Denmark
http://www.ni.com/ask
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Sure i'll get back when I've had a chance to test it. I'm working on another project right now - but I will look into it in a couple of weeks.

Morten
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Well I finally got around to trying this out and it's not what we hoped for.
I copied the GPIB.dll from my Windows XP SP2 C:\Windows\System32 directory into the corresponding Vista folder, and ran a simple 16 bits windows program.
The program now thinks it has access to the IEEE driver but ends up with an error after the timeout period is over.
No joy - the 16 bit program does not get connected to the hardware.
Morten
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I also have the similar problem.  I have an old DOS program that accesses the GPIB through the old "NI-488.2 For DOS" driver.  It was originally run with the CONFIG.SYS including DEVICE=C:\GPIB.COM.  Now I am trying to run this old app under VISTA (x86) environment which installs GPIB-USB-B and NI-488.2M driver version 2.5.  (This is because the source code is missing and can not be rebuilt as Win32 app.)

 

Is this condition still supported? I know VISTA x64 editions do not support old DOS and WIN16 apps, but x86 editions still do.

 

I also thought another solution that I use Virtual PC 2007 installing real MS-DOS 6.0 as a guest OS. (DOS is still available by subscribing MSDN Professional or higher.)  However, Virtual PC that operates inside the Windows host PC does not work with USB, therefore the guest MS-DOS in the Virtual PC never recognizes the GPIB-USB-B.  Is there any solution for the guest MS-DOS to recognize the GPIB-USB-B?  The NI-488.2M ver 2.5 is installed at the host OS (VISTA x86).

 

regards,

Makoto

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