Installing 2011 makes 8.2.1 fail (daqmx)

[ErnieH]

Drivers for boards should never expire. Maybe the drivers and LabVIEW are a little to tightly coupled. As long as the users tolerate this, it will not change. I have other systems with drivers that are ancient and they still work. How about letting newer version of LabVIEW use the old driver if nothing else? Making a working system non functional should not even be an option.

[Dan_P]

I agree that the old drivers should not lose support. Validation of labview in a large application wint a large user base is also an expensive process so I often find myself skipping versions. When it is time to upgrade I still need to support the old version until the validation is complete.

Dan

[Ben]

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@ErnieH wrote:

Drivers for boards should never expire. Maybe the drivers and LabVIEW are a little to tightly coupled. As long as the users tolerate this, it will not change. I have other systems with drivers that are ancient and they still work. How about letting newer version of LabVIEW use the old driver if nothing else? Making a working system non functional should not even be an option.

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Multiple versions of LV ALL BY ITSELF can live together nicely.

It is only the drivers (toolkits can suffer from the same disease) that fight for control.

I have never sacraficed a machine to do the experiment but I suspect if you skip installing the Drivers disk the old version of LV would not be damamged. Of course the DAQmx palette would be missing under the new version. I suspect if you wanted to navgate to the old version from the new version you could still use the old drivers... right up until you save all and then the old version of LV would not be able to open the old DAQ VIs anymore.

It still analogous to the wheels for my jeep. I can't expect they will fit the new one but it would sure be nice if they did.

Ben

[Ben]

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@Dan_P wrote:

I agree that the old drivers should not lose support. Validation of labview in a large application wint a large user base is also an expensive process so I often find myself skipping versions. When it is time to upgrade I still need to support the old version until the validation is complete.

Dan

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Depending on how you use the word "support" they either don't loose support as long as you have subscribed to NI Support or they have absolutly no support since once release the are seldom "fixed" but replaced by the new version that hopefully does have a fix.

I am in the same boat as you Dan and I am trying to help by sharing what I know re dealing with the reality that NI is a publicly traded company and the directors of such have a feduciary commitment to their investors to make money. Supporting old version of LV old version of LV is money down the drain when the bean-counters are invovled.

But on the other hand...

If more people were willing to pay an anual fee to be able to use new version of NI DAQmx with older versions, marketing would provide the "Legacy Support".

Skipping ahead and evaluating such a scheme...

How would we select the polymorphic version of a DAQmx VI in a version of LV that did not offer polymorphic VIs?

Ben

[Dan_P]

How about as a legacy driver pallete?

Dan

[Ben]

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@Dan_P wrote:

How about as a legacy driver pallete?

Dan

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Now there is an idea with merit!

Using old hardware that was only supporcted by the old DAQ is handled in a similar way.

I suspect there would be complications with the naming that we would have to deal with but maybe...

I was once told by somebody in NI that if I could come up with an idea that would make NI money and convince marketting, tht it would happen. If we can find a solution and a revenue stream to fund it, there may be a chance of getting this changed after all.

until then, I'll just have to keep collecting PCs.

Ben

[Dan_P]

As far as collecting PC's isn't there a licenseing issue with that?

Dan

[Ben]

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@Dan_P wrote:

As far as collecting PC's isn't there a licenseing issue with that?

Dan

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As I understand it, provided I am only developing on one of them at a time, its just fine.

Ben

[ErnieH]

I don't feel we need to tell them how to charge us more. I think they have that down pretty well. My take is: if you are going to continually make my job harder every year, don't expect me to reward you for that by buying a product that has few features that help you program and creates more headaches for you. If you come out with a new version every year, it is a TOY, not a tool. Instead of draining your user base dry, expand your market. Then maybe when a company needs a programmer, they could find one. 

[Ben]

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@ErnieH wrote:

I don't feel we need to tell them how to charge us more....

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Hi Ernie,

I am willing to "Carry the water" if we come up with a scheme that marketing can swallow.

Take care,

Ben