Any experience installing Windows 95 on to a 8156B controller?

[ssniguy]

Thanks in advance for any help.

I have a system up and running that is based on Windows 95 and LV 5.1 executing on a 8156B controller. We recently decided to order a spare 8156B controller (4 years later!!). NI dug up an old 8156B in one of their test labs and agreed to sell it to us used (Thank You NI!). The controller arrived with NT 4.0 loaded on it.

The path of least risk seemed to be the one that has us ghosting the image from the original 8156B controller and installing it on the spare controller or installing Windows 95 and LV 5.1 on to the spare controller. I've not had much experience with Norton Ghost. Waiting for them to get back to me. NI doesn't support Windows 95 installation any more.

I have a NI PXI 1010 chassis, 1 NI PXI 8421 RS485 module, 1 NI PXI 6040E A to D and 4 SCXI 1104 signal conditioners. Would it be possible to run my LV 5.1 based application on W2K running LV 6.1. NI will support the installation of W2K on the 8156B controller.

Again, thanks in advance for any help.

john

[Jeremy R.]

John,

Thanks for posting to the forums. Sorry to hear that Norton hasn't helped yet with the ghosting process. I still think that is the best way to go, even over installing Win 2K.

Just to answer your questions about upgrading: Your 5.1 application should work fine porting to LabVIEW 6.1 given the instruments that you have. The biggest consideration will be what driver versions (NI-DAQ, NI-VISA, etc.) you are currently using with LabVIEW 5.1 and what versions you will be using with 6.1. It is likely that you can use the exact same version of each driver, but even if you have to upgrade those a bit, I wouldn't anticipate any problems there. Good luck and feel free to ask more questions.

Best Regards,
Jeremy R.
NI - Applications Engineer.

[Josh_KNH]

Hi John,

Just to throw some ideas out on your first alternative, if you wanted to stick with Win95 on the 2nd system, NI does still provide the peripheral drivers on the website here.

Basically all you need to do is copy the contents of the Windows 95 installation CD and all of the peripheral drivers to a temporary folder on the hard drive (make sure they are unzipped first as Win95 doesn't have a built in zip utility like Win2K/XP). Then boot to DOS and run the Win95 installer directly from the hard drive.

As far as getting the files onto the hard drive, if you already have some other OS installed on the controller, great, copy them across the network or use a USB-CD drive. If not, you can copy across the network by booting into DOS with network support. There are details in this KnowledgeBase document here: DOS Ethernet Drivers for the PXI-815xB and PXI-815x, VXI-850, VXI-860 and VXI-7xx Series Controllers....

So ultimately I think you will be successful choosing either to go with Win95 or Win2000 on this issue. Best of luck!

Joshua Hernstrom
PXI Software
National Instruments

[ssniguy]

Josh,

Thanks for the update. I recently heard back from Symantec and was informed that Norton Ghost 9.0 will not support W95. It looks like I'm destined to go down the path of installing W95 on the spare controller. Your info will help me significantly.

Thanks.

john

[ssniguy]

Josh,

Wanted to follow-up with our results. As mentioned above, Symantec ghost was of no use. We created a network boot disk per the reference provided above. The network boot disk provided access to the ENET port allowing us to map to a desk top with a CD ROM drive. That part was a bit tricky as we had to navigate our way through the "net" utility. Your references helped there as well. We wiped the HDD clean using FDISK (had to boot from a W95 startup disk to get this utility). We then installed the contents of the W95 install CD to the HDD and ran setup. Network interface "hick-up'ed" a few times transferring the contents of the CD, but we finally got through it. Once W95 was booting, we configured the ENET port and mapped to a CD ROM drive. Network drivers in W95 worked much better then "net" utility. We also chose to transfer any CD data to HDD of mapped desk top before transferring. Seemed to work much better. The PXI 8150 series startup manual provided settings for ENET port. We then updated the video drivers per your references. We were up and running in about six hours. LV 5.1 install went smooth.

Thanks again for all of your help.

God Bless,

john

[ssniguy]

Josh,

I got both the NI PXI 6040E (AI) and NI PXI 8421 (RS-485) modules to be recognized at the device manager but only the 6040E is recognized by MAX. I'm running version 1.0.1, Build 27 of MAX. Shouldn't the RS-485 module be recognized by MAX as well?

Thanks again.

john

[Jeremy R.]

Josh,

Yes, the RS-485 should also show up in MAX. You will need another driver (other than NI-DAQ) though. You will need NI-VISA and NI-Serial before the board will be detected under Devices and Interfaces in MAX. I have not installed that device in quite some time, but you should be able to check Device Manager as well just to see if Windows has properlly detected the device as well. Once it is installed you will see the additional ports in the "Ports (Serial and Parallel)" section.

Jeremy

[ssniguy]

Jeremy,

W95 device manager recognizes the device as you described (I installed the NI serial driver). However, the device still does not show-up in MAX. It also looks as though all of the configuration required for the RS-485 device is present in device manager.

john

[JohnM 64]

Hi John,

Because the NI serial hardware is handled slightly differently than other hardware currently, the PXI serial devices will not show up austomatically in the PXI chassis in MAX despite being seen in Device Manager. The device is installed correctly, however, and your serial ports should show up in under Devices and Interfaces/Ports.

A trick that I have seen in the past to get around this is to remove the device from Device Manager, and then have the machine scan for new hardware. Once Windows detects and auto-installs the device, it may show up in MAX as part of the PXI system. Either way, you should still be able to communicate through these serial ports.

john m
Applications Engineer

[ssniguy]

Does it matter if the RS-485 device shows up in MAX or not? It looks as though I can configure the device from within device manager.

THanks.

john