Problem importing older .nce files

[pallen]

Greetings,

Yesterday I ran into a problem trying to import some older .nce files into the latest version of MAX.  The files would appear to import.  But when I opened up the detailed view of the Virtual Channels, there was nothing there. 

Right now I'm installing the original DAQ drivers that came with LV 7.1 (The version this software was written in) on an old PC.  Hopefully this will work, otherwise I'll have a long drive and a lot of notes to make.

Are there known compatibility issues between older .nce files and the latest versions of MAX? 

If so.  Is there a work around?

Thanks.

[pallen]

Follow up:

I was able to install my original LV 7.1 DAQ drivers, including MAX 3.1 on an older PC this morning.  My old .nce files import here without a problem.

I guess it's always a good idea to have some older spares around. 

[JoeFriedchicken]

Hi Patrick,

For future reference, transferring MAX configurations between versions of MAX is best done with the ini format. nce usually gets tweaked with each update and imports between MAX versions range from fully compatible to errors generated to missing scales. For the same version of MAX, nce files are better. This happens because the nce file format is binary.

[pallen]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for that reply.  I didn't know there were other formats I could export MAX configurations to. 

In the future, I'll export to both formats. 

[pallen]

Hi Joe,

This thread is probably dead now.  But again I've hit a major snag with what seems to be a MAX incompatibility.  Only this time instead of missing information, MAX just hangs at 100% CPU indefinitely when I try to import settings from a project that isn't all that old. 

Unfortunately I don't have .ini files.  Only .nce files.  

Essentially this means that every project backup I currently have is useless.

Is there anything I can do about this? 

 

[pallen]

More follow up:

As per your suggestion Joe, I attempted to save my older configuration files in .ini format. 

Unfortunately the version of MAX that will open the files is not capable of saving in any format other than .nce. 

Now I know why I hadn't seen that capability before. 

[JoeFriedchicken]

Hi Patrick,

Yes, older MAX versions only export to nce files. In response to the quirks and show-stoppers of importing/exporting between versions, the ini format was added, and since it's ASCII text, there is very little chance for incompatibilities. The nce files are nearly a complete binary dump of the MAX database, hence the headaches when migrating between different versions.

Two work-arounds come to mind:

1) Set up a computer with an intermediate version of MAX and migrate the files in stages. You only need to install the NI-VISA driver on that system to include the version of MAX you need [1].

2) On your system with the latest version of MAX, create a typical configuration file, export it as ini, and use that file as a template to create the configurations you need.

[1] What Version of MAX Is Installed with NI-VISA?
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/4F3DB9D8815CA7908625743D0066800D?OpenDocument