NI488.2 drivers for Intel-based Mac?

[bmonreal]

I'd like to install the NI488.2 drivers on a new Intel-based Mac. However, the available PPC-native drivers don't seem to work; I don't know if the fault is mine or the emulator's. How soon will an Intel-native (or Rosetta-compatible) driver will be released? Or is there some trick to making it work?

[MissyS]

Hi,

If you use the 2.0 driver and the GPIB-ENET/100, it could be used with Rosetta. While this isn't officially supported, this may work for you, but there is no guarantee that this will work without any problems. Unfortunately, I don't have a time-frame for if or when NI-488.2 will support an Intel-based Mac.

Regards,

[costap]

Any update on this now that Labview 8.2 is out? I really need this and 488.2 2.0 does not seem to work for me.

[EJMont]

I, too, am eagerly awaiting release of NI 488.2 drivers for the Intel-based Mac in order to install it in my laboratories.  As Macintosh PowerPC's become more outdated, the user base's demand for GPIB driver support of Intel processors will only increase.  Even now, the top-of-the-line Mac Pro, machine of choice for many scientific computing power users, has converted to Intel processors.  I urge National Instruments to continue their long history of support for the Mac OS by making the GPIB transition to Intel with the rest of us!

[JasonSmith]

Hello,

We do not currently have plans to create a driver for Intel-based Macs.  There has just not been enough interest in GPIB on Mac OS X to warrant creating a driver at this time.

Jason S.
GPIB & Serial
National Instruments

[costap]

I wish someone would have told me that before I bought Labview 8.2. I wouldn't have bothered.

[sth]

In article <1158608417357-417274@exchange.ni.com>, JasonS <x@no.email>
wrote:

> Hello, We do not currently have plans to create a driver for Intel-based
> Macs. There has just not been enough interest in GPIB on Mac OS X to
> warrant creating a driver at this time.Jason S.GPIB & SerialNational
> Instruments

Wow. This is a show stopper after all these years. Yet the NI-DAQmx
base folks have their driver recompiled and working. Given that the
driver must have been written in XCode it is fairly simple to change to
a universal driver. Unless it was written badly with all sorts of
endedness errors.

I must say this will be a big problem.

-Scott

[UrsL]

Yes, this is indeed a very counter productive statement from a NI person and I sure hope that it does not reflect the official NI stand for LabVIEW driven GPIB on MacOSX. I really wonder about how NI measures sales for the Apple Macintosh anyway. I have just bought 8 NI-PCIe-6251 DAQ boards for use on our new PowerMac G5 machines under DAQmx Base 2.1 and as always of course they came complete in a box for Windows only with the DAQmx software for Windows 2000/XP, V 8.0.1. Not a single word and no statement about the possibility of using the hardware on other platforms, the available driver options and where to download them from. This is really actively drying out an admittedly small but still emerging market. If I look around our campus I see more and more of our students carrying around Macs these days. I wonder which is the more realistic perception anyway, mine or NI's? Is Bern a very special place not representing a peer market at all?

Funny enough I was just about going to ask this list about what options there are to do GPIB from LabVIEW on MacIntel machines for driving instruments through a network link. Even though so far I have done very little GPIB I am right now in the need of such a solution.

NI, please keep on sustaining your continuos commitment for the LabVIEW heritage platform

Urs

Urs Lauterburg
Education
Physikalisches Institut
University of Bern
Switzerland

[JasonSmith]

I appreciate the feedback you are providing in this forum. 

The intent of my original post was to keep you updated on the status of GPIB availability for Mac OS X for Intel, rather than leaving you hanging with the simple statement that we cannot provide information regarding any release dates.  I know the frustration of thinking something is coming that never materializes.  

For the time being, your option on Mac OS X for Intel based Macs is to use NI-488.2 Version 2.0 for Mac OS X with a GPIB-ENET/100.  While this was designed and compiled for PowerPC, this driver operates entirely in user mode, so it is able to execute with Rosetta.  We have had several users report success using this version of the driver in their applications.  We have not performed the extensive testing on the Intel platform that an official driver release would receive, but we expect it will work in most situations.

While we are not planning any immediate release of NI-488.2 for Mac OS X on Intel based Macs, we are continuing to evaluate the interest of our customers in using this platform. I am keeping a close eye on the forums and all requests which we receive regarding support for NI-488.2 on Mac OS X for Intel.  Please file a product suggestion through our Product Suggestion Center if you are intesting in this driver, as this will help us to track the demand for the product and determine the best course for the future.

Thanks,

Jason S.
GPIB & Serial
National Instruments

[JasonSmith]

Oops! That last line should have read:

Please file a product suggestion through our Product Suggestion Center if you are interested in this driver, as this will help us to track the demand for the product and determine the best course for the future.

Thanks,

Jason S.
GPIB & Serial
National Instruments