LabVIEW
LabVIEW at 20!
Oh!, I can see very experienced people around here!. My first contact with LabVIEW was with LabVIEW 6.1 at somepoint of 2004. I saw a file with the extension "vi" in the desktop of a PC in my school and I couldn't resist to double-click it to see what the hell was that kind of file I've never seen before. After a few moments LabVIEW appeared in front of me for the first time ... but I said "Uhh I don't know what's this, I better close it".
After a month a professor introduced us to LabVIEW and still it wasn't more than "other" software. It was until I could put my dirty hands on an Evaluation Copy of LabVIEW 7 that I fall in love with LabVIEW, using that Evaluation Copy I knew LabVIEW was the ideal Programming Software for me!
My first encounter with LabVIEW for a project occured in the fall of 1992. I was tasked with building a test system to test a complex module that had multiple analog inputs and provided its output in the form of a digital telemetry stream. I was supposed to build the test system using HPBasic ("we have more people that know it") rather than the Turbo Pascal that the previous ones. NI did a demo at a hotel near where I worked showcasing "LabVIEW 2.5 for Windows and Unix". I came back and somehow convinced the project lead to let me try it! My first program ended up requiring me to write a driver for a HP control system analyzer (a combination of digital/analog input spectrum Analyzer, sort of). I mistakenly started writing a complete driver, rather than the parts I ultimately needed. Whew, a lot of coding in a completely new "paradigm" (really over-used word in the software world back then). Had other engineers look over my shoulder and comment about being paid to play video games. Used a lot of sequence structures, largest connector pane, etc. I will say in my, Ben's, etc.'s defense that the early examples used a lot of sequence structures. Left printing out of test results to last, how hard can it be, I had done it in Pascal, C and Fortran. Oop's, no way to easily just print out a page of text. When I called support the young lad asked "why do you want to?" I mentioned that my customer (U.S.Navy) wanted hard copies of the results, not just our assurance that it passed! His recommendation was that I build a VI with a text control that fit the entire FP and then just execute a screen print. Unfortunately this was before high speed inkjets or laser printers were common, and cheap, so it meant dumping Mbytes of image to an HP dot matrix printer, a very Loooong process. Quite educational, as was the next project which was supporting a large test system, running 2.2 on a Mac, which took almost 30 minutes to start the program! Literally click on the icon and go get coffee! Ran into that original project lead at an NI Tech symposium a couple of years ago, he had taken the plunge and was "dabbling" in LabVIEW. Commented to me, "Wow, now I understand why your were so psyched about using LabVIEW".
P.S. Those who remember the early days won't forget to save early and often, lest you loose a bunch of work due to an "Insane Error"!
P.M.
The Rev 3.0 solution is still running today!!!!! this system does not crash
I think I first saw Labview on a Mac in the late 1980's, but the company refused to buy a Mac.... they were too expensive. We were using Z80's and similar stuff based on Z80 and similar hardware I designed; by the late 1980's were using a CPM style realtime OS in 32K bytes of ROM. It took months to get projects any where near a functional prototypes, lots of wires, static RAM, EPROMS and assembly listings.
LabVIEW memories
There was no undo function, if you didn't back up your files every serious change and needed to go back then you were in big trouble. The display screen was 640 by 480 dots with 2 colours, black and white or in fact green on black cos the monitor only had one phosphor color. The functions were on menus and always seemed to come over the critical part of the diagram....It was like looking at a map of New York and trying to find your way to the other side by looking only two streets ahead at any one time! Technical support was by facsimilie or telephone line to real people, and often I would ring from Europe to the states to get a specific answer, even the telephone lines had delays on them. Staying back late or coming in early to help with the time zone difference and telephone charges there was no 24 hour support forum then.
All my programs fitted on one floppy disk!!!! I had two floppy disks for Labview.
Message Edité par Conseils le 02-03-2006 11:27 PM
Message Edité par Conseils le 02-03-2006 11:27 PM
Nice try
It looks like a phospor screen and it definitely is an early Windows version of LabVIEW, but the Windows XP window decorations make it VERY unlikely that this is running on a computer with phospor screen
Rolf Kalbermatter
