Experiment problem

[AGale]

Okay, here's the problem--

I'm a chemical engineering student at the University of Toledo.  I'm no computer genius, yet I've been hired this semester by one of my professors to act as what amounts to lab maintenance and upgrading.  Well, a student from a long time back made an experiment as a doctorate thesis, and I'm now in charge of moving the code of this experiment, in LabView (6.1, for those keeping score.  Windows 2K, as well) to a new machine with LV 8.0 and Windows XP.  I'd done this before for a different experiment running on less, but I've run into a big snag with this one.

I managed to copy everything over nicely, but when I try to run the controlling programs, I recieve an error 10001 at both the DIO Port Config and AO Group Config.  Now, I did some searching in the code, and I found that both of these functions are run from the same card, a PCI-6703 connected to an SCB-68.  I had no problems with this before.  I ran the install on the new computer, however, and it's told me that a certain line, 0x64652ae9, was read as 0x00000000, which wouldn't allow the memory to be read.  I have all the necessary drivers in their most recent iterations, and the card itself is stated as working by the computer's device manager, but something's still up with this thing.

I have three weeks left in this semester.  This experiment is something of the department's crown jewel, but it's had problems all semester since being moved back from a display in Cincinnati.  I need to at least get this running to not count this semester as a total loss.  What is wrong, and how can I fix it?

[Norbert_B]

AGale,

please make sure that you have the correct driver installed.
Since the project was made in 6.1, it works with NI-DAQ 6.x (or even older). This driver is not available in LV 8.x so you need to install the "traditional NI-DAQ" to use your program without changing too much. Changes which might be neccessary are esp. change of device-number, depending on the settings in MAX (measurement&automation explorer).

hope this helps,
Norbert B.

[AGale]

Hmm...where would I find the necessary 6.1 support driver?  This site has a Legacy installer that I've already downloaded, but it only goes to 7.0.

[Norbert_B]

AGale,

ok, here the correct drivers for the appropriate LV-Version:
LV 6.x and older only can use NI-DAQ 6.9.3 (now called legacy) and older.
LV 7.x and 8.x can use both NI-DAQmx and traditional DAQ (versionnumber 7.0 and up). You can install and use older versions of NI-DAQ with these as well, but that has never been tested (at least not for 8.x).
Please note that you can have only one "major" NI-DAQ-Version installed at a time. So you cannot install e.g. 6.9.3 in parallel to NI-DAQmx 8.3. But you can install trad. DAQ 7.4 in parallel to DAQmx 8.3 if you like.....

If you want to use a project built in LV 6.x or older which uses NI-DAQ in LV 7.x or LV 8.x, you should update the driver as well. Since trad. DAQ is quite the same as legacy, you would want to install this one.
You can download many versions of NI-DAQ here.
Just select "MultifunctionDAQ" -> {DAQ-Version e.g. "Traditional NI-DAQ (Legacy)"} -> {Versionnumber}.

hope this clears things up,
Norbert

Message Edited by Norbert B on 11-28-2006 02:03 AM

[AGale]

Okay, so I downloaded the older drivers (6.9.3) and installed them.  The program is still not working.  Where do I go from here?

Of note, the devices are all numbered as they should be.

Message Edited by AGale on 11-28-2006 07:59 AM

[Norbert_B]

AGale,

maybe this link gives you some more ideas.

Norbert

[AGale]

It might help, but I have copied over everything from one working drive and computer to another for a required upgrade.  I've changed nothing in the programming thus far, and where I'm at with this program, I don't really know what I'd be looking to change anyhow.

[Ed W]

AGale,

What were the results after checking through the Knowledge Base article that Norbert B posted?

You can actually use NI-DAQ 7.4 with LabVIEW 6.1.  It is only LabVIEW 6.0 that requires 6.9.3.

I would recommend installing NI-DAQ 7.4, and then post back if you continue to have problems.

Ed W.

[AGale]

Yeah, I checked through there, but I have a NEW batch of issues now.

Okay, the professor I'm working under todat had me take off LabVIEW 8.0 and install v. 6.1, thinking this would cure what ails us.  A quick glance (and the knowledge that LabVIEW is mostly backwards-compatible) shows that it does not.  Not only that, certain VIs are coming up saying they can't activate because the subVIs have been run in 8.0, so they can't run in 6.1.  In other words, this thing is officially more screwed up now than it was a week ago.  How do I fix this new issue?  Also, would calibrating the 6703 card help me out at all?

Also of note--every bit of data was in the same position in old drive as it is in the new, to the best of my knowledge.

[Ed W]

Hi AGale,

Calibrating your device won’t fix any of the software incompatibility problems that you’re having.

Unfortunately, there is no way to get those VI’s working in an older version of LabVIEW once you’ve used them in a newer version unless you explicitly save them back for a previous version.  Unless you have all of the versions of LabVIEW installed from version 6.1 through 8.1, you won’t be able to do this. 

However, if you’d like, you can post the VI’s to this discussion forum, and I can save them back to version 6.1, and then post them back up again.  If you’re willing to do this, please post back with the VI’s attached.

I’m not sure where the source of your original software problems started, but I do apologize about the problems you’re having with these incompatibilities.

Ed W.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments