GPIB (ISA, PCI) cards not visible in MAX but active in device manager

[b2a2]

Hi-

I am trying to install an NI GPIB card into my newly configured PC with a fresh install of Labview 8.6 and NI-488.2 3.0. I have an ISA card (which I would prefer to use) and a PCI card for troubleshooting. Both cards show up in the windows device manager but not in MAX.

Things I have tried:

- Installing both cards on their own

- Reinstalling all NI products

- Installing the cards in another PC (works fine)

- Reinstalling the NI-488.2 driver from the NI site

What could be the cause of this problem?

[Michelle_N]

Hi b2a2,

For your ISA card, there was a bug found in the 3.0 release of NI-488.2 where ISA boards will not show up in MAX (this includes PCMCIA). This bug will be fixed in the next release of the driver. I will be sure to post a link when it is available on the web for download. As a work-around, you can downgrade to NI-488.2 v2.7.3 for the time-being.

For you PCI card, I'm not sure why it isn't showing up. The bug mentioned only affects ISA-based GPIB cards. What is the state of the board in device manager? If you downgrade, are you able to see the PCI card in MAX?

[b2a2]

Hi Michelle,

Unfortunately, changing the driver version hasn't changed anything. The first version I tried was 2.6, which was supplied with my LabView install (Fall 2008 Driver DVD), then 2.73. as you suggested and finally 3.0.

Windows device manager shows the card as active and ready for use. The card driver is listed as C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\ni488k.sys

The GPIB troubleshooting utility only shows the "Software (NI-488.2)" item, which of course passes the test.

[Michelle_N]

Interesting. This sounds like a different issue. If the hardware doesn't show up in the GPIB Troubleshooting Utility, then it's not showing up in the GPIB.ini file. There is a service responsible for getting the hardware into the ini file called NI-488.2 Enumeration Service. Is this service running?

[b2a2]

Yes, the NI-488.2 Enumeration Service (C:\WINDOWS\system32\nipalsm.exe) is running properly.

[b2a2]

Any other ideas before I try completely reinstalling windows and all NI products?