Need Advice on Using Older NI Equipment

[FrancisGohier]

Hi NI Community,

I'm diving into the world of NI and LabVIEW for the first time, and I'm supposed to reuse some equipment that’s about 8 years old. The problem is, most of the references seem deprecated, but I assume they might still be compatible with newer software or chassis. I'm unsure if it's reasonable to use this older equipment, especially since I'm not clear if PXI is still widely used or if PXIe has completely taken over.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I'm working with:

- Controllers & chassis: NI PXIe-8108 in a NI PXIe-1082 chassis, NI PXIe-8115 in a NI PXIe-1078 chassis

- Digital I/O: NI PXI-6509 (Discontinued?)

- Digital Multimeter: NI PXI-4065 (Active)

- Multifunction DAQ: NI PXI-6259 (Last time buy 2024-12-31), NI PXIe-6363 (Active)

- Multiplexer: NI PXIe-2575 (Active)

- Oscilloscope: NI PXI-5105 (Only found in PXIe version now)

- RS485/RS422 Interface: NI PXI-8433/4 (Discontinued? PXIe replacements?)

Some colleagues suggested I might be able to use a chassis with a separate PC rather than being constrained to a controller within the chassis. Does anyone have experience with this setup? Is it practical?

I'm looking for advice on whether to stick with this older equipment, and any articles or discussions that could shed light on this topic.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Francis

[ZYOng]

Depending on what you are trying to implement. most of the hardware is still supported by the latest version of drivers. You can check NI Hardware and Software Operating System Compatibility

Practically, most of the users still stick with older versions of software and drivers, unless necessary.

[santo_13]

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@FrancisGohier wrote:

Hi NI Community,

I'm diving into the world of NI and LabVIEW for the first time, and I'm supposed to reuse some equipment that’s about 8 years old. The problem is, most of the references seem deprecated, but I assume they might still be compatible with newer software or chassis. I'm unsure if it's reasonable to use this older equipment, especially since I'm not clear if PXI is still widely used or if PXIe has completely taken over.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I'm working with:

- Controllers & chassis: NI PXIe-8108 in a NI PXIe-1082 chassis, NI PXIe-8115 in a NI PXIe-1078 chassis

- Digital I/O: NI PXI-6509 (Discontinued?)

- Digital Multimeter: NI PXI-4065 (Active)

- Multifunction DAQ: NI PXI-6259 (Last time buy 2024-12-31), NI PXIe-6363 (Active)

- Multiplexer: NI PXIe-2575 (Active)

- Oscilloscope: NI PXI-5105 (Only found in PXIe version now)

- RS485/RS422 Interface: NI PXI-8433/4 (Discontinued? PXIe replacements?)

Some colleagues suggested I might be able to use a chassis with a separate PC rather than being constrained to a controller within the chassis. Does anyone have experience with this setup? Is it practical?

I'm looking for advice on whether to stick with this older equipment, and any articles or discussions that could shed light on this topic.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Francis

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Just the embedded controllers are too slow to today's standards, if you're not planning to get them upgraded to any recent OS Win 8+, you may be fine, but still not good enough to run latest softwares.

If you replace the controllers with a remote control module or more performant embedded controller, the rest of the instrumentation is still good.