MIgrating to Mac Book from LabView 6i (Windows 98)

[fox90]

Hi ! I have a question about if its possible to migrate a project from LabView 6i running in a Windows 98 machine to a newer version of LabView and Mac OS X.

The project reads data from FP-AI-110 (http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/es/nid/2185) 

 The machine with Windows 98 connects to the FP-AI-110 using a RS-232 serial cable.

Thanks for your time !

[johnsold]

I do not think there is any support for programming compact FieldPoint on the Mac. However you should be able to communicate via RS-232 from the Mac.  No recent version of a Mac has an RS-232 port (I am not sure any Mac ever had a native RS-232 port). I have used USB to RS-232 adapters built around the FTDI chip with success on the Mac.  I do not recommend adapters with the Prolific chip or drivers.

So, is it possible? Perhaps, if you only need to communicate with existing systems.

Is it a good idea? Well, the FP-AI-110 is obsolete. Putting a lot of effort into upgrading the program without changing the hardware may be a marginal choice.

If you are comfortable with the reliability of hte hardware and the number of spares you have on hand, I suggest a simple communications test before committing to a full upgrade.

Lynn

Programming in LV on the Mac since version 1.2

[fox90]

My second option could be to use a virtualized Windows runing a newer version of LabView in the Mac OS X, use the USB-Serial adaptor to connect the Windows to the FP-A110.

Do the newer versions of LabView still support the FP-A110 ?

[johnsold · Accepted solution]

I have no idea about current FieldPoint software support.  I have never used it.  If someone else does not respond to this thread in the next day or two, you might start another with FieldPoint in the subject.  A call to your NI rep should also get you the answer.

Lynn

[cayenne]

Just some things I found.

I have LV 2011....running on Win7.  But I ran into some problems I thought initially might be Win7 or hardware related on my box I was developing on (it wasn't).

I decided to try out the eval version of LV 2012 for Mac OSX...and I couldn't get the NI serial cable working with the Mac native version of LV2012....I couldn't find the NI driver for osx.

HOWEVER, I was also playing with VMWare on OSX...with Win7 working on the VM...I hooked the NI RS232 cable to the Mac (macbook pro, late 2011 version)...with Win7 on VMWare, LabView 2011 installed on it...and the vi worked just fine with the serial cable...etc.

So, just something to consider, if the OSX version of LV doesn't seem to work well for you when you transfer, you might look at running something like Win7 in a VMWare VM...and working that way...

HTH,

cayenne

[rolfk]

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@johnsold wrote:

I do not think there is any support for programming compact FieldPoint on the Mac. However you should be able to communicate via RS-232 from the Mac.  No recent version of a Mac has an RS-232 port (I am not sure any Mac ever had a native RS-232 port). I have used USB to RS-232 adapters built around the FTDI chip with success on the Mac.  I do not recommend adapters with the Prolific chip or drivers.

---

At least the Mac II series had (almost) all a serial port. Electrically it was actually RS-422 and physically it was a somewhat odd connector but with a little adapter cable it could usually be used as RS-232 too.

There used to be a VI library that implemented the Optomux or whatever it was called protocol of the serial interface on the FP modules. It was meant to allow access from RT targets back in the early days of LabVIEW realtime, when things were all not so much integrated as nowadays.

[rolfk]

Here are a few links to Optomux related resources!

http://digital.ni.com/manuals.nsf/websearch/A62558E5BDED8486862573460055DF12 

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/3EC99318D768D87E86256E0D007FBFEE 

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/F1C7766A00958A1986256DF100079EBA 

[cayenne]

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@rolfk wrote:

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@johnsold wrote:

I do not think there is any support for programming compact FieldPoint on the Mac. However you should be able to communicate via RS-232 from the Mac.  No recent version of a Mac has an RS-232 port (I am not sure any Mac ever had a native RS-232 port). I have used USB to RS-232 adapters built around the FTDI chip with success on the Mac.  I do not recommend adapters with the Prolific chip or drivers.

---

At least the Mac II series had (almost) all a serial port. Electrically it was actually RS-422 and physically it was a somewhat odd connector but with a little adapter cable it could usually be used as RS-232 too.

There used to be a VI library that implemented the Optomux or whatever it was called protocol of the serial interface on the FP modules. It was meant to allow access from RT targets back in the early days of LabVIEW realtime, when things were all not so much integrated as nowadays.

---

In my dealing with LV on mac....as I described above...running LV 2011 in a VMWare VM on a mac...using the NI usb-rs232 cable it worked like a charm. At the time I was just doing some loopback testing, but the driver and VISA all worked normally.

HTH,

C

[fox90]

that's actually my second option, to use VirtualBox (in my case) with Win7+LabView 2011 and keep using that old box called FP-AI-110 because these things aren't cheap.

[fox90]

So, newbie question :  using LabView 2011, what should I install to get data from the FP-AI-110 ?