Hi Jim77215,
Thank you for you question. According to the product page for the PCI301, this is a serial bus device. Since this is not an instrument, it will not have an instrument driver that you can access here. In order for you to use this device with the NI-VISA driver (and LabVIEW), it must be visible in Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX). In general, MAX shows only NI devices, however, there are a few exceptions. We cannot gaurentee that your device will be visible in MAX, but follow the steps below to see if your device will work with LabVIEW.
1. Download the NI-VISA driver.
2. MAX via VISA looks in the following registry location to populate a list of resources:
My Computer » HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE » HARDWARE » DEVICEMAP » SERIALCOMM
(See attached image for registry screenshot.)
Serial ports native to a given machine are registered here, as well as all National Instruments (NI) serial interfaces (such as PCI-232 boards). Some 3rd party boards also populate this registry location with corresponding serial ports which behave as standard serial ports. In this case, the 3rd party serial ports should show up in MAX under the Devices and Interfaces » Ports list, and can be accessed using VISA. More specifically, these ports should be available as resource selections in the VISA Interactive Control utility as well as in LabVIEW (via a VISA Resource Name control or constant).
There is a Knowledge Base article that explains how you can try to get your third party serial devices to work with NI-VISA and LabVIEW.
If you have anymore questions regarding this issue, please let me know. Thanks again for your post!
Regards,
Todd V.
Applications Engineer
