pci-gpib not found on OS X

[Stuart_Field]

I have a PCI-GPIB board under Mac OS 10.3.9. I have installed the latest NI-488.2 software. When I run the Explore GPIB utilty, or the Troubleshoot utility, the board cannot be found.

It works fine if I boot into OS 9. Any suggestions?

[ScottieB]

When you run the troubleshooting wizard, does it say that the software is installed properly?  What is the part number/serial number of the PCI-GPIB board you're using in the system?

Scott B.
GPIB Software

National Instruments

[Stuart_Field]

The wizard says that the software was installed OK.

I took the board out and found sveral numbers:

On the back, in the metal traces, was 183619B-01
On a paper tag with a barcode was A35A77
On the front, in white ink, was A55Y183617B

Also, on the front it says PCI-GPIB/+ (c) 1996

Stuart

[sth]

In article <1132785663929-292265@exchange.ni.com>,
Stuart Field <x@no.email> wrote:

> I have a PCI-GPIB board under Mac OS 10.3.9. I have installed the latest
> NI-488.2 software. When I run the Explore GPIB utilty, or the Troubleshoot
> utility, the board cannot be found. It works fine if I boot into OS 9. Any
> suggestions?

Did you install the driver on the machine with that card in it? There
is a firmware update that needs to be done on certain older GPIB boards
that ran under OS 9.

Open the terminal and use ioreg to see if the board is registered at all
with the driver.

ioreg | grep gpib

should give you a line that looks like:
| | +-o NATI,pci-gpib@13 <class IOPCIDevice, registered, matched,
active, busy 0, retain count 11>

Also the kextstat command should show the drivers being loaded. You
should have version 2.3.1 or later of the NI-488.2 drivers installed.
So this command should give a line that looks like:

100 0 0x2f066000 0x65000 0x64000 com.ni.driver.gpibprtk
(2.3.1) <95 10>

-Scott

[ScottieB]

I agree with the other Scott. 🙂  According to your ASSY #, your board is an older rev, so you'll need to run the Firmware Update Utility in your NI-488.2 folder.  Once you run this and reboot, the card should show up in the troubleshooting wizard.  I can't recall exactly which part numbers need the update (it's safe to run it even if you don't need it), but any card earlier than 183617K-01 (meaning, 183617A-01, 183617B-01, etc) should probably run it.  188513x-01 board never need the update.

Let us know how it goes once you run the update.

Scott B.
GPIB Software
National Instruments

[Stuart_Field]

Well, things seem to be regressing for some reason. Although originally Troubleshoot reported that the software was correctly installed, now it says it isn't. So I uninstalled the software according to the Uninstall document that came with N-488 (including two files that I had to remove with sudo using the terminal), then re-installed, but Troubleshoot still complains that it's not installed correctly.

I ran ioreg and kextstat and got results similar to Scott's.

I can't (yet) install the firmware updates, since the board is not recognized by the software -- and now the software doesn't seem to work!!

[ScottieB]

I'm sorry you're having so many problems.  There is an updated "UNINSTALL.TXT" here that you should follow that adds a couple other steps to get back to a clean system:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/A5E02E03337BC46486256FC5007ADEF5?OpenDocument

Also, you're still on 10.3.9, right?  If you have moved to 10.4, this is a familiar problem.  Should install just fine on 10.3.9, however.  Let me know what the results are after you uninstall according to that document.

Scott B.
GPIB Software
National Instruments

Message Edited by ScottieB on 12-01-2005 10:11 AM