I have a new Mac on which I'm trying to install the NI instrumentation drivers (both VISA and GPIB), and things aren't working so some advice would be appreciated. I downloaded the most recent versions of both (14.0 for VISA and 3.0.1 for GPIB), ran the installers (restarting between the two installs), and then tried to run the VISA configuration utility and the GPIB configuration utility to check that the drivers were ok (at this point, no measurement hardware is attached to the machine; ultimately, the hardware will be a USB->GPIB adapter and a USB->RS-232 adapter). Both configuration utilities crashed on running. The GPIB config got as far as putting up its window and then crashed a couple of seconds later; NI-VISA never even managed to finish displaying its splash screen. Looking at the crash reports, the crashes appear to be in the low-level NI-PAL driver. The report says /Library/Frameworks/nipalu.framework/Versions/1/nipalu abort() called Poking around the list of files mentioned in the NI-PAL uninstall guide, it appears that the kernel extension nipalk.kekt wasn't actually installed properly (it is missing from both /Library/Extensions and /System/Library/Extensions, and according to the uninstall file, it should be present in both. I tried copying the kext over from a machine which does have a functioning VISA/GPIB install, but OSX refused to load it as it wasn't actually installed. My tentative plan right now is to follow the uninstall instructions for VISA, GPIB, and NI-PAL and then try rerunning the installers, but I'm afraid that I'll end up in the same place. Is there some special trick or something needed to get these drivers to install properly (i.e. should things be installed in a specific order, should I try installing VISA 5.4 and then do an upgrade install to 14, try sacrificing a goat, stuff like that)? Hardware is a Mac Mini running OSX 10.9.5. Thanks for any help.

And just to follow up with a bit of additional detail, I went through the same procedure on a second Mac that was fresh out of the box. When the installer for NI-488 was run, one of the elements it tried to install was an 'Update' to the NI Core Driver Services subsystem. This was despite the fact that the VISA install had put in place a much newer version of the core drivers. So, it seems that the issue is that the NI-488 installer is not doing a proper version check before overwriting the driver subsystem. It obviously checked to see that the driver was installed, since the action was listed as 'update' rather than 'install'. At least in principle, running the NI-488 installer first and then the VISA installer should work, but for whatever reason the one time I tried that in my testing, it didn't work. Perhaps I hadn't done a complete job of cleaning up from one of the other failed attempts. Just for the record, the sequence that appears to work is (0) Remove all traces of any prior failed install. Follow the steps in the uninstall.txt files for NI-488.2, NI-VISA, and NI-PAL. The uninstall guide for the latter is located in /Library/Application Support/National Instruments/NI-PAL (1) Run a standard install of NI-VISA 14.0. Restart the machine. Check that VISA works (just run the config utility) (2) Run a standard install of NI-488.2 3.0.1. Restart the machine. Both VISA and GPIB crash when accessed (2a) (optional) Curse at length (3) Run a standard install of NI-VISA 14.0. Restart the machine. Both VISA and GPIB should now be functional. Tested on a pair of 'Late 2012' Mac Minis running OSX 10.9.4. One machine had Labview 2014 installed before installing any instrumentation drivers, the other did not have LabView installed.

Instrument Control (GPIB, Serial, VISA, IVI)

Installing NI-VISA and NI-488.2 on Mac

Solved!

Hi - I'm having a similar issue and would greatly appreciate any assistance. I'm trying to install NI-488.2 driver on a Mac to use GPIB-USB-HS to control an instrument with Matlab. But thus far, I'm unable to successfully use the driver. Here are further details:

MacBook Air - 10.14.1 OS
NI-488.2 version 19.5 for macOS
Hardware to be used with GPIB-USB-HS

The installation completes successfully with no error messages. It creates a directory under Applications called, National Instruments. However, running Application -> NI-488.2 -> GPIB Explorer, I get an error message popup that says: "The attempted operation failed." If I run, Application -> NI-488.2 -> Troubleshooting Wizard, I get an error message popup that says: "The Ni-488.2 software is not correctly installed on your system. Please follow these steps: 1. Restart your system. 2. Reinstall the NI-488.2 Software. 3. Run the Troubleshooting Wizard again." I have tried to do this a couple of times, with no luck. I end up with the same error message and the status shows failure at "Ni-488.2 Software Presence Verified" step.

Has anyone been able to successfully use GPIB-USB-HS with Mac OS 10.14?

If yes, could you please kindly mentioned the driver version used? And if any special steps were taken to install the driver? Thanks.