Serial Compatibility VI's not working in Labview 7.0

[Tom at Onset]

I recently upgraded from Labview 6.02 to Labview 7.0 and found that my application could no longer open or communicate via a serial port.

My application uses and I prefer the old serial compatibility VI's because I had trouble with the VISA serial VI's. And the new, Labview 7.0 turned the old serial compatibility VI's into VISA serial VI's.

For anyone interested in using the old serial compatibility VI's, here is one way to get them back, and working properly.

1) Find a computer with an older version of Labview, probably 6.02 or older.

2) Replace the following v 7.0 *.llb files: "_sersup.llb" and "serial.llb" with these v 6.* or earlier files: "_sersup.llb" and "Serial.llb".

3) Also copy this file "serp
drv" from your root v 6.* or earlier folder into your root v 7.0 folder.

That worked for me.

I sincerely hope that Labview will consider replacing the serial compatibility vi's in any future versions or patches with the original ones.

Tom

[Pepe]

The only advantage of serial compatibility is cross-platform, and you
get this with visa too. If you are creating an exe then you have to
install the visa runtime engine. If you want to stick with Windows
programs I have found that the MSComm control called with activex is
much more flexible. Also, in order to get write access to the MS Comm
control (writing a LabVIEW program) you have to install some trivial
microsoft enviroment like visual basic, this licenses the control for
both writing and using. When you distribute the application the control
is automatically licensed for use.

Anyway, thanks for the app note on serpdrv.

Tom at Onset wrote:
> I recently upgraded from Labview 6.02 to Labview 7.0 and found that my
> application could no longer open or commu
nicate via a serial port.
>
> My application uses and I prefer the old serial compatibility VI's
> because I had trouble with the VISA serial VI's. And the new, Labview
> 7.0 turned the old serial compatibility VI's into VISA serial VI's.
>
> For anyone interested in using the old serial compatibility VI's, here
> is one way to get them back, and working properly.
>
> 1) Find a computer with an older version of Labview, probably 6.02 or
> older.
>
> 2) Replace the following v 7.0 *.llb files: "_sersup.llb" and
> "serial.llb" with these v 6.* or earlier files: "_sersup.llb" and
> "Serial.llb".
>
> 3) Also copy this file "serpdrv" from your root v 6.* or earlier
> folder into your root v 7.0 folder.
>
> That worked for me.
>
> I sincerely hope that Labview will consider replacing the serial
> compatibility vi's in any future versions or patches with the original
> ones.
>
> Tom

[Dan_Mondrik]

Tom:

Can you be more descriptive about the errors? What calls failed? With what error code(s)? Do you have an NI Spy log?

For most customers, this conversion to using VISA for Serial was transparent and worked flawlessly. Obviously that didn't happen in your case, but we'd like to see if we can fix the problems you encountered so that others won't hit them as well.

And no, I don't think we'll "solve" that by going back to the original serpdrv in the future.

Dan Mondrik
Senior Software Engineer, NI-VISA
National Instruments

[Spaz]

Thanx for the timely info. I really don't want to mess with all the silly visa stuff for some simple serial I/O.

[Spaz]

Thanx for the timely info. I really don't want to mess with all the silly visa stuff for some simple serial I/O.

[WPS]

Tom,

Thanks also for the info - I have some legacy software (LV4 vintage) that I have to modify and will need to maintain the old serial VI's.

Wayne

[Michal]

Tom,

thanks for the recipe on how to get the serial compatibility VI's back.
A general comment: I don't understand why something fully operational and really simple has been removed from LabVIEW. The serial comp. VI's are great for demo and teaching purposes, as they illustrate the principles of serial communication in a great manner without too many confusing inputs. Also, they are familiar to "old" users and really fast and flexible to program.

[van_axl]

Many thanks for this infos !!
I had exactly the same issue ( serial didn't work anymore with labview 7 ) . So after changing these files, I can continue using my old program with serial communication.
nicolas

[Dr._Imad]

I agree with you that serial vi's should not have been dropped ( I assume NI has their own good reasons for doing that though).
I have the same issue that you have, and I have not upgraded to LabView 7 yet, waiting for release 7.01 or 7.02 that fixes all the little things I have been reading about.
In my case , I have executables that use the serial vi's for customers all over, and I do not have any Visa run time installed and configured in their computers. So far I plan to stick with old versions of the applications in their case.
The real issue is what if simply copying the serial vi's from 6.02 will not work with future releases of LabView, then you better start using serial visa if you want to use LabView.
And since NI is listening, I hope they will address
my concerns.
Thank you for the info.

[van_axl]

The method you give us to make the serial working is fine , but when I try to build my VI with application builder and then try to run the exe it tells me that it cannot run the serial part ! so i cannot use it whith exe .
Is there something to do before building the exe ?