AT-MIO-16X Drivers

[Sam_42]

I've got a pair of positively ancient AT-MIO-16X (non-plug-&-play) boards running LabView 4 on old Pentiuim I (166MHz) machines and I'm trying to modernize my config without having to re-write everything.  I'm finding that it might not be as easy as I would expect, due to lack of backward-compatibility in various places.

I've tracked down a pair of XP-capable machines that still have ISA buses, which is a start... but...

The first problem I run into is drivers:  I am referencing https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/compatibility/08/archived--traditional-ni-daq--legacy--d... --

First: is it true that there has never been a Windows 2000/XP driver for the AT-MIO-16X, and in order to run this board I've got to stay all the way back at NT4?  Or is there a reasonably simple way to get this board working on a halfway-modern OS?

Second: I gather from discussions that getting new boards and a more recent copy of LabView would also require a substantial amount of programming work to bring the code base up to date, as I can't just plop a LV4 VI into a new copy of LV and expect it to work.  The original programmer is no longer here, so if we ditch the legacy board and the old version of LabView then someone (me?) would have to spend a lot of time learning what the VIs do, and how to get them working on an all-new system. Is there a shortcut for this, a quick way to get old AT-based LV4 VIs working on new (or fairly new) HW and SW, or is a full upgrade really as prohibitive as it looks?

Third: if we can't upgrade the board, and we gotta stick with WinNT and LV4, it looks like the most recent driver is 6.1T... which appears utterly unavailable for download. Now what?

I know, it's a sticky question about a potentially ugly process.  Any thoughts you might have on how to do this correctly, would be greatly appreciated.

[John_P1]

Hi Sam 42,

What's the end goal of modernizing the configuration?  If the existing system works I'm not sure I would recommend trying to upgrade the individual components unless you have a specific reason for doing so (e.g. the AT-MIO-16X is EOL).

It is true that there has never been a Windows 2000/XP driver for the AT-MIO-16x.  NI-DAQ 6.1 was the last version to support the AT-MIO-16x--it came out in 1997.  If you do need a copy of the driver I can track it down and post it for you on NI's FTP site.  I can also look at getting it up on the web for a more permanent location.

If you do want to move to hardware which supports XP but keep the existing code, you'll want a DAQ product that supports "Traditonal" DAQ, since DAQmx is a completely different API.  This would limit you to older hardware which is a bit costly due to the use of legacy components.  On the LabVIEW side, the latest version can't even open a LV 4 VI and you would need an intermediate version (see here)--I believe you can request older versions of LabVIEW with SSP which is included when you purchase a new version of LabVIEW (you might want to confirm this with a sales rep if you choose to go this route).  I can't really offer a prediciton of what upgrade issues you might encounter if you decide to do this.

If this were my application and I wanted to upgrade I would probably write the code from scratch with new hardware (using DAQmx) and a modern version of LabVIEW.  Assuming that you want to continue to maintain this application well into the future, now might be a good time to bite the bullet and rewrite the application for more modern equipment that is supported by current NI drivers.

Best Regards,