Measurement Studio for VC++

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suggestions for writing application in Visual C++

I am in the process of converting an old DOS data acquisition program into Windows 2000/XP for ComputerBoards, Inc. data acquisition boards. I have written a VxD device driver so that the board will work in Win95/98. I have also written a Visual C++ interface that talks to the VxD. To get it to work with Win2000/XP, I know that I need to port the VxD to WDM (not too fun!).
Recently, my boss visited a lab which uses the NI-660x board. He wants me to try to use this board in my application instead of the Compuboard.
So, my question is this....what is the best/easiest solution? I want to reuse as much code as possible, so I don't want to trash my VC++ interface code. Also, I don't want to write a device dri
ver for the NI board. I looked on the NI web site, and it appears that there is a NI-DAQ software library that would allow me to control the NI board. I also saw on the web site that there is LabView, LabWindows, Measurement Studio, etc, etc. But, these seem to yield the most benefit when you are designing an interface. Another disadvantage is that they cost a lot of money, whereas it looks like NI-DAQ ships with the board. Therefore, it looks like NI-DAQ is the way to go???
Any suggestions (or horror stories about programming with the NI-DAQ library) would be welcomed.
Thanks,
Trina
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NI-DAQ is the driver software and is free with the board. You DO NOT need to write your own device driver for the board. NI-DAQ provides a C-style API that you can use to program the board with from Visual C++.

Measurement Studio, CVI and LabVIEW are application development tools. They provide tools for analysis, user interface, networking, signal processing, etc. You don't need these tools to communicate with the board, all you need is NI-DAQ. You would want to consider buying Measurement Studio if you want to design a user interface for your program, want to do analysis (FFT, signal processing, mathematics), or need easy data publishing and network tools. LabVIEW and CVI are full development environments like Visual C++. LabVIEW is graphica
l programming and CVI is based on ANSI C. Measurement Studio includes tools that plug in to the VC++ and Visual Basic environments.

I'll let other users comment on the quality of our NI-DAQ driver software, but I think you will find that it is easy to use with many examples. If you have any questions about programming the 660x, just contact our support engineers via phone, e-mail, or this forum through http://www.ni.com/ask.

Best Regards,

Chris Matthews
National Instruments
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