Traditional/Legacy NI-DAQ driver support for Windows Vista

[NF1]

Hi,

I'm running a MFC C++ application on Windows XP using both the Traditional/Legacy NI-DAQ and the NI-DAQmx drivers.  I'm planning on upgrading my OS to Vista and see the NI-DAQmx ver 8.6 supports vista, but Traditional NI-DAQ ver 7.4.4 only goes up to Windows 2000/XP.  Do you know if the Traditional Ni-DAQ supports Vista?

Thanks!

Nia

Message Edited by NF1 on 09-11-2007 11:38 AM

[Dennis_Knutson]

As you said, the latest version of traditional DAQ does not support Vista.

According to this, NI has no plans to support Vista for the old driver.

[NF1]

Thanks for the info.  I guess I'll have to try to ask them to add the support... 🙂

[Ed W]

Hi Nia,

Rather than use both Traditional DAQ and DAQmx drivers concurrently, have you considered upgrading the rest of your code to DAQmx?  As you’ve seen, DAQmx is fully compatible with Windows Vista.  However, there is no Traditional DAQ driver support for Windows Vista. 

If you are concerned about the risk of moving your code to DAQmx from Traditional DAQ, keep in mind that there are plenty of shipping examples and online resources that can help in your transition.

That being said, if you would like to discuss this issue further, please post an e-mail address that we could use to contact you offline.

Regards,

Ed W.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[NF1]

Hi Ed,

I'm using the Traditional NI-DAQ to communicate with a NI-4551 card.  Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think NI-DAQmx supports the NI-4551 card?

But the biggest reason I don't upgrade is that NI-DAQmx doesn't have the C API functions that I use such NIDSA_controlsweptsine() and all the other swept sine functions.  I'm actually really disappointed that there is less functionality in the NI-DAQmx C API than the traditional NI-DAQ/NIDSA drivers and that NI doesn't have an equivalent NIDSA library to go with the NI-DAQmx and NI-4461 card, the replacement for NI-4551.  The NI engineers have told me that I have to spend a couple grand to purchase the Sound & Vibration Kit, Full Labview, and Application Builder in order to do the same thing that I did using the free NIDSA C library!  Plus I'd have to create and maintain my own Labview vi's and dll's instead of just doing everything via my MFC C++ application and calling predefined NIDSA functions.  To say the least, my "upgrade" from the NI-4551 to the NI-4461 card has felt much more like a downgrade as far as I'm concerned.

To make a long story short, I'm trying to support both cards in my one MFC C++ application so that my team can slowly upgrade to the new NI-4461 card as the NI-4551 cards go bad (though none have died on us yet! yah!).  I've still not been able to get quite the same functionality out of the NI-4461 as the NI-4551 card.  My swept sine test is a lot smoother, much more consistent and it's way easier to get the frequency/phase responses from the NI-4551 card because of all the on-board processing I'm told.

Thanks,

Nia

[Ed W]

Nia,

Would you be willing to allow NI to contact you offline regarding this issue?

-Ed W.

[NF1]

Hi Ed,

That would be fine.  I have spoken with several NI Engineers and pretty much gotten the same response -- unfortunately the NIDSA C API will not be ported to work with the NI-DAQmx driver and although the NI-4461 card is the replacement for the NI-4551 card, it doesn't have an on-board digital signal processor so some of the functionality is lost.  It's really too bad because the NIDSA API was a very, very useful toolkit for people who want to use NI hardware within a C++/BASIC platform, and combined with the NI-4551 it was a great option for designing a tester that could do signal generation/processing/analyzing from a regular PC.  Plus, after buying the hardware the API was free of charge.

I thought that Labview was written in C/C++, so it seems like it would be feasible to provide more C++ API's to mimic the NIDSA library, even if some of the signal processing has to be moved to number crunching algorithms.  Labview is a nifty environment, but I still find it too cumbersome to use beyond a Development/Lab environment. 

Thanks,

Nia