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5411 arb card seems to hang on niFgen = niFgen_CreataArbWaveform() call; Upgraded PCI Chassis from Win2K to XP

Help Please...  We recently replaced our failing Win2K 12-Slot PCI Chassis to a new XP Chassis keeping all the old cards and are using the same driver marked as 1.4.0f5 (in the Driver File Details Dlg).  When I try to load on of many waveforms into the card, it seems to just hang indefinately.  Is this the reason for the driver hanging, do I need a newer driver?.  I wanted to use as many legacy drivers as the old system used so that I run less risk in API changes / unsupported features.

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Hi MKrause,

 

Can you list out the model numbers of the chassis and module hardware that you had and the hardware that you have now? Also, what drivers are you currently trying to use? I'd like to check compatibility for you. 

 

Regards,

Travis Ann

Customer Education Product Marketing Manager
National Instruments
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Hello…  Thank you for your response. 

We went from a circa 2001 ICS Advent 12-Slot PCI chassis running Win2K to an Advantech ACP-4000 12-Slot PCI chassis running WinXP.  We kept all the legacy cards;

 

Qty 2 – Condor Engr CEI-520-0816 ARINC-429 cards; Driver 4.30

Qty 3 – NI-6703 Dac Cards; Driver 6.8.1

Qty 1 – NI-Serial Card; Driver 1.45

Qty 2 – NI-5411   Arb Cards; Driver 1.0.2

Qty 2 – Condor Engr CEI-500 IP cards w/ 5 Synchro/Resolver IM ea.; Driver 4.30

Qty 1 – NI-GPIB card – controlling PS and Switch matrix and 400Hz Ref; Driver 6/2000

 

I ran a few tests; the Condor 429 cards seem to work, the NI-6703 cards seem to work, the NI-GPIB card seems to work, the CEI-500 IP cards seem to work, I have yet to test the NI-Serial card and the NI-5411 cards seem to hang on a waveform load at the call to niFgen_CreateArbWaveform() call trying to load 1st of 360, 16000 sample Composite VOR waveforms.  I suspect that the 1.0.2 driver isn't able to support WinXP.  I have a legacy LabView *.exe (no Src files) to calibrate 6703 outputs with offset and gain adjustments applied at runtime.  This App seems to work as I ran all the Cal points for Analogs, Discretes, and Ref Voltages.  It appears my last hurdle is the 5411 Cards/Driver.

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Hi MKrause,

 

The latest NI FGEN version is compatible with the 5411 on WIN XP. Our drivers are backwards compatible and the latest versions include bug fixes from previous versions. The only hindrance might be your version of LabVIEW. Which one are you using? Is there a reason you don't want to upgrade to the latest FGEN?

 

Regards,

Travis Ann

Customer Education Product Marketing Manager
National Instruments
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Thanks thus far...  The issues I fear is that we have a LabView based App *.exe that we use to measure and set calibration data for the outputs of the Qty 3, 6703 cards.  We don't have any src code for this and I don't know what version was used other than this was developed back in 2001.  For the FGen drivers, I assume going forward to latest driver for XP will not affect any relationship of 6703 to LabView application and this app does not interface with the 5411 cards.  So it sounds like there's no risk.  I'll proceed upon your guidance...

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Hi MKrause,

 

One concern to keep in mind is that NI-FGEN 2.9 requires at least NI-DAQ 7.4.4 (XP only) or NI-DAQmx 9.1.7. Do you have at least that for your system?

 

Regards,

Travis Ann

Customer Education Product Marketing Manager
National Instruments
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We're currently using NI-DAQ 6.8.1 that came with the system.  If going to NI-DAQ 7.4.4 won't break any API calls used in the LabView App and lets us use NI-FGEN 2.9 then we're OK.  I'm not so concerned about using the latest drivers, more so about using compatable version if NI-FGEN and NI-DAQ that will run on XP and still allow our older legacy LabView App to funcion.  All I'm asking for is a way to get the current API usage from an older system that will see very little if any forward enhancements.  What is the oldest paring of NI-FGEN and NI-DAQ that works well with XP?

 

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I'm just going to pitch in here... whatever you decide to try, you are upgrading from a very old set of drivers and NI-FGEN is tightly coupled with DAQ; which means that upgrading NI-FGEN will upgrade a whole lot of shared dependencies under the hood.

 

This should be ok, and we always maintain backwards compatibility in our APIs. So a LabVIEW-built application that calls into NI-FGEN will still work with the newest NI-FGEN installed.

 

But, just to be extra safe and in case anything goes wrong, make sure to create an image of your system using Ghost or some other utility so that you can go back if needed. Being extra careful can't hurt you here 🙂

Marcos Kirsch
Chief Software Engineer
NI Driver Software
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OK, thanks Travis and Kirsch for your input.  I'm going to install;

NI-DAQ 7.4.4
NI-FGEN 2.9

Can either of you give a quick walk-through on how to perform this process.
Something along these lines...

1.) Un-install NI-FGEN and NI-DAQ
2.) Pull 6703 and 5411 cards
3.) Install NI-DAQ
 install each 6703 card one at a time

4.) Install NI-FGEN
 install each 5411 card one at a time

 

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Once you have a backup of your system, just go ahead and run the NI-FGEN 2.9 installer. This will upgrade all your dependencies. There is no need to pull out cards, uninstall, or anything else. After the installer has run, you need to restart.

 

Keep in mind that NI-FGEN includes LabVIEW support for versions 8.6.1 and newer, as noted in the Readme. So if you want to edit or write LabVIEW code, you need one of these version. If you just want to run a LabVIEW-built application, even if it was built with an earlier version of LabVIEW, you should be ok.

 

Let us know how it goes and good luck!

Marcos Kirsch
Chief Software Engineer
NI Driver Software
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