The (irreversible?) loss of historical documents!

[Hassan_Atassi]

I also want to clarify that we are not simply removing content because it is old, or about old products.  We understand that many of our customers are still using older versions of software, or hardware that we no longer sell.  We do want to maintain useful information for these users so that they can continue to be successful in using our products.  However, we also want to make sure that it is very apparent that these documents are related to old products so they don’t confuse our customers that are using the latest and greatest.  You can see some examples of this here and here.

Also, in addition to removing documents, we are at same time updating and filling in gaps in our content to make sure the most relevant and common things our users are searching for are findable and have the most up to date information.   

While I know we won’t be perfect in our execution due to the sheer volume of content we have, the goal of this initiative is to allow all of you to find the information you need quickly and effectively while ensuring that it is accurate and up to date, so you can get back to your real job of solving some of the toughest challenges facing the world today (or spending some downtime answering questions on the forums ).

If you have further questions or comments about this, or our content in general, feel free to PM me as I am always looking for feedback!

[altenbach]

Some things are almost impossible to find using the search tools, but I absolutely love the LabVIEW manual from 1989. 😄

[X.]

A few pearls:

• Hardware requirements: Macintosh with at least 1MB of memory and a hard drive
• At that time, function front panels were accessible (page 5-1).
• There were some interesting functions which later disappeared (Comparison, page 5-41, Strings, page 5-107).
• Some icons haven't changed over the years, but some had some major redesign later on (XˆY might remind some of a recent suggestion).
• The "Formual Calculator" (page 5-24) was designed "in lieu of the creation of elaborate block-diagram subsections"...
• "undef" was a valid numeric constant (page 5-27), at least in the Formula Calculator. NaN was NAN.
• Array functions had error indicators (on their FP), but those were already not accessible on the connector pane (page 5-33 and following).
• a tick count was 1/60 of a second (page 5-49)
• GPIB was big and there was something called the MacBus (page 5-96)

etc, etc.

[X.]

More LabVIEW user manuals can be found with a search for (the quotation marks are important, the upper/lower case not):

- "Archived: labview user manual": 6.0, 6.1, 7.0, 7.1

- "Archived: LabVIEW Function and VI Reference Manual" or "Archived: G Programming Reference Manual" or "Archived: LabVIEW Function and VI Reference Manual": 4.1, 5.0

Missing: version 2.x & 3.x.

Can someone find them?

[RavensFan]

Interesting on page 5-29, the random number function was -1 to +1, not 0 to 1.

[altenbach]

I still have all manuals and media starting with 4.0. I actually won a full LabVIEW 4.0 version at a UCLA LabVIEW user group raffle back in the mid nineties.

Here is a picture of my own LabVIEW 4.0. Never activated (I always used the lab license). I wonder if it is worth something 😄

[Intaris]

Wow. A cd. I was expecting floppys. 

[Jacobson-ni]

Does anyone know what NuBus is? It's mentioned once in the introduction and then never again.

Seen on page 2-11 as well, could you only wire in one direction in early versions of LabVIEW?

I only started with LabVIEW 2012 so I guess I may deserve the "LabVIEW programmers have it so easy these days" comments.

[RavensFan]

It looks like it was the backplane for a Mac system back in the day.

https://www.omega.com/literature/transactions/volume2/dataacq2.html

[johnsold]

NuBus was the backplane expansion bus used in the Mac II series of computers.  NI produced a DAQ device called the LabNB which had capabilities similar to a USB-6009 but without the liabilities of USB.

LV 1 and LV 2 came on floppy disks.  I think there were about 16 of them for LV 2.2.1.

The printed LV 3 manuals may have been the best software manuals ever produced by any software company.  I wish I still had them.  The descriptions of functions and analysis VIs were essentially a primer on signal processing.  They took about 3 times the shelf space as the LV 4 manuals pictured above.

Lynn