Does any version of LabVIEW know how to drive an IOTech MacSCSI 488 (A.K.A. DEC IEZ11)?

[gsteemso]

I have recently acquired one of these units, but it came with no software. It is an IEEE-488 bus controller that hooks up to the host machine via SCSI-1, and dates from circa 1988. Unsurprisingly, IOTech staff had never even heard of the product when I tried to ask them for driver software.

I want to use the unit to access Commodore PET-era IEEE 488 peripherals from a Mac Classic II running Mac OS 7.6.1. That machine has a 68030 CPU and 10MB of RAM, so I'll need a vintage revision of LV. Anyone know which one will work?

I am going to have to do some sort of programming for this project no matter what I do, but if LabVIEW knows how to drive the thing it will help a lot.

Thanks in advance,

G. 

[Coq_Rouge]

I am just curious why, you want to do this. And have you tried using a modern GPIB controller using the using the IEE 488 port mode (not the same as IEE 488.1). I know many modern NI GPIB controllers support this mode. 

http://www.omega.com/temperature/z/OverviewIEEE.html 

[rolfk]

LabVIEW certainly won't support this directly. NI had their own SCSI type GPIB controllers back then which were driven by the all nice NI-488 driver software. And anything NI-488 could be used directly in LabVIEW but IO Tech was at that time a fierce competitor and NI did not tell them how to get their own hardware made to work with NI-488.

I remember having to deal with customers in NI support who were trying to get this working and as far as I know there were possibiliies if you got the right drivers from IO Tech, but that is about 17 years ago and I can't by all means remember the details anymore. The only ones who could probably still help you are the IO Tech guys themselves, but if they do not even know anymore they ever produced and sold that thing, all bets are open.

As to LabVIEW versions that will work on such a machine you could go back as far as LabVIEW 2.2(.1) but not newer than 5.0 I think.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Message Edited by rolfk on 07-29-2009 02:27 PM

[Coq_Rouge]

I can see now that I was somewhat unclear. I was more thinking about using a modern computer and a modern NI GPIB card but in IEEE 488 mode. Since it it seems like you have a Labview program. The trick is to communicate with the old GPIB unit like an old person. Very slow, and wait in patient for every replay 😉

[rolfk]

If the purpose is to control the PET devices rather than utilize the old ancient Mac hardware, I would recommend to simply use a modern GBIP controller from a modern computer system instead of trying to fiddle with that hardware. The Mac II were great systems and performed well but they were also notorious to start having intermittent problems after many years of operations. Most of those problems were a result of solder joints in the PCB making not very well contact anymore. Especially the SCSI port is well known to work rather intermittingly after 10 or more years of operation. Not to say that this is bad, most PCs never saw such an operation time at all.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[gsteemso]

So I’d need to find the IOTech drivers and a revision of LabVIEW between 2.2 and 5.0. OK, that makes sense. Too bad old versions of LabVIEW aren’t available for download. Hard to imagine anyone paying full retail price for software that obsolete.

Since not having IOTech drivers is my whole problem in the first place, I think I will have to try something else. I do thank you for the concise answer though.

In reply to those of you who were wondering why I would even want to do something like this with such old hardware, well, why does anyone do anything as a hobby? Retrocomputing is fun.

Plus also, I don’t have the money to buy a modern IEEE-488 interface. The MacSCSI 488 only cost me $20.