Is NI488 compatible with MACOS CLASSIC?

[BernardHosten]

I used NI488 and NI PCI_GPIB Board under MACOS 9.2.
I controlled the board through a program written in C++ with the API Control and OpenDriver.
Unfortunately, these API are not available in the library Carbon.
Then my applications cannot be ?carbonized?.
Worst: They even do not work under ?Classic?.
Is there a solution?

[Ketan Vyas]

We currently don't have NI 488.2 (GPIB) driver for MacOS X. The PCI-GPIB driver for MAC OS 9.2 will not work on MACOS X. The next NI 488.2 driver release for MACOS X will support the GPIB ENET/100 and not PCI-GPIB.

[BernardHosten]

Will the next driver support the USB/GPIB or Firewire/GPIB for MACOS X?

[Ketan Vyas]

The next NI 488.2 driver for MAXOS X will exclusively support GPIB ENET/100.

[BernardHosten]

This position is not "serious" for a such company as "National Instrument"! It seems to me that it is not so difficult to transform the drivers that you wrote for the USB/GPIB under "WINDOWS" in drivers for MACOSX. The buses USB and GPIB are the same in both environments. Apple furnishes all the documentation to control the USB. Do you provide the documentation for your USB/GPIB controller? If it is the case I could ask some students to write the drivers.
GPIB ENET is a good solution, but very expensive in comparison with USB/GPIB or FIREWIRE/GPIB solutions.
I have many PCI/GPIB boards to replace. Do I have to spend a fortune just to update my Lab.?

[c.bacon]

I agree with Bernard. It is scandalous from NI to stop the development of the drivers for the PCI/GPIB boards for the MacOS X users. In our lab, there are almost twenty macintoshes equipped with PCI/GPIB boards (sold by NI) ! What to do now with these computers ? Are we forced to keep MacOS 9 systems forever or must we replace all these boards by very expensive GPIB/ENET interfaces ? I am one of the first customer of NI with the first versions of LabView on Macintosh and I am very disappointed by the unpleasant attitude of NI toward Macintosh users...

[tomldavis]

Well, I certainly don't like this answer. It's hard for me to understand this lack of support. When decisions like this are made, I always wonder how management weighs development and support costs, anticipated revenue, customer satisfaction and company reputation.

Seems like the least NI could do is open source their MacOS drivers so someone could get the PCI and PCMCIA cards working under OS X. Would this be an option?

[MatthewSmith]

Hi Tom,

The Mac OS X operating system is an exciting development from Apple, and we strive to provide as many GPIB solutions for the operating system as possible.

In our first iteration of support for the Mac OS X, we are providing a Mac OS X driver for the GPIB-ENET/100 exclusively. However, at this time we are examining future possibilities for Mac OS X, including USB and IEEE 1394 (Firewire).

Your feedback on using GPIB under Mac OS X is certainly appreciated and considered when we decide which bus options on which platforms to pursue for GPIB.

I am very open to further discussing Mac OS X development if you would like. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Matthew Smith
Instrument Control
Product Marketing Manager
National Instruments
matthew.smith@ni.com

[Steve Son]

Matthew:

I do hope you will eventually support Mac OS X too. I know dozens of researchers here that use GPIB and Mac OS X. Further, if you have Beta versions we'd be happy to try them.

-Steve Son, son@lanl.gov

[ELUCERO]

Hi Matthew,

We are currently upgrading all of our Mac's to OS X.2 (Jaguar) to keep current with all of the exciting changes in the apple developers world. I have read all of the news about NI's choice to exclusively support the GPIB-ENET/100 in OSX (sigh). However, as it has been a year of serious developments in the applications and demand to move to OS X in the Mac-world I was wondering what NI's, now revised, stance is on supporting or releasing the source code for the PCI interface in OS X.

Thanks-
ERIK A. LUCERO
University of Colorado at Denver
SQUIDLAB
ealucero@ouray.cudenver.edu