NI-Sync Installation for Old Versions of LabVIEW

[bfrig24]

I'm currently using a relatively old computer for running LabVIEW along with a PXIe Real-Time chassis for some real-time data acquisition applications. I'm hoping to get some advice on choosing the proper version of NI-Sync to install for my system.

My system consists of a Windows PC running Windows 7 with LabVIEW 2010 installed. The accompanying DAQ chassis is a PXIe-1065, with a PXIe-8133 controller. This controller is running LabVIEW Real-Time 10.0.1. For data acquisition, DAQmx 9.3.0 is installed. Recently we purchased a PXIe-6672 system timing and synchronization module to help with synchronizing some of our data acquisition tasks for an upcoming test. There was no NI-Sync installation CD that shipped with the module, instead it came with a leaflet that pointed to download NI-Sync from NI's website. My understanding is that the NI-Sync library needs to be downloaded and installed in order to use this module within our chassis. When I go to the NI-Sync Download page, I see that the versions available for download only go back to the 2014 version, which is more recent than the version of LabVIEW installed on both my host computer and the chassis controller. When I check the supported versions for the PXIe-6672, it only shows compatibility back to version 15.0.1. 

Would I be okay in trying to install one of these newer versions of NI-Sync with my current system? Or is there an alternate place I can download the older versions of NI-Sync? 

Ideally we do not want to have to update any of the other components in our system and leave it as-is. 

[JÞB]

The equivalent would be to place a teenager in kindergarten and pass it off without notice.

Your hardware didn't exist when LabVIEW 2010 was released a full decade ago.  You need software that was released after the hardware was designed to get support for the hardware.

Time to upgrade!

[bfrig24]

Hi, thanks for the reply. 

I'm still a bit confused though. It was my understanding that there were earlier versions of NI-Sync that would be compatible with both the PXIe-6672 and LabVIEW 2010. For example, I found this page which describes release notes for NI-Sync version 3.3. It states that its supported on Windows 7 for LabVIEW and LabVIEW Real-Time 2011/2010/2009/8.6 which would be perfect for my system. In the list of supported devices it also lists the PXIe-6672. Also if you look at the manual for NI-Sync you can see that it was printed in 2011, which is still 3 years older than the oldest available version of the library for download from their website.

Am I missing something here? Why are the earlier versions of NI-Sync not available for download from NI? I feel as if this compatibility chart is misleading since it doesn't show any of the versions made prior to 15.0.1. Looking on the NI website it would seem as if the earlier versions of NI-Sync, like version 3.3 for example, never existed...

[JÞB]

Turns out that you are right!  I looked at the release notes from my media library (and I have media spanning CD, DVD and USB from 7.1 to 2020 with Dev Suite to SRL)

I would suspect that you may need to contact your NI sales team or a local long term Alliance Partner to find installation media for such an old version.

[santo_13]

The easiest way to get old driver versions is to download the whole device driver installer, for example, you can install NI-Sync 3.2.2 by downloading Device Drivers Feb 2011.

https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/downloads/drivers/download.ni-device-drivers.html#327626

[bfrig24]

After some more digging I found some archived pages on NI's website.

By searching "Archived: NI System Driver Set Month Year" in Google you can find archived pages on the NI website that link to an FTP site by NI where the driver packages can be downloaded. I chose September 2011 because it seemed to have the versions closest to what is currently on my system, along with NI-Sync 3.3 which I need.

From this I think I should be able to run the installer on my host machine to install NI-Sync and its RT counterpart.