PXI-ExpressCard8360 on Mac : visaconf doesn't see instruments

[Keller]

I bought a PXI-ExpressCard8360 to connect a cPCI crate to my Mac PowerBook. It has to be a portable computer, because it's a demo system, and none of our PC portables have an ExpressCard slot; so I took the risk that the bridge would work on a Mac.

According to this support article, the likeliest problem would be that the PCI enumeration would not enumerate across the bridge. I see from Apple's System Profiler application that this works fine; the instrument I'm trying to access is listed as "PCI Slot 3@7,14,0". I have attached the relevant pages of the System Profiler output. The only device with a Vendor ID of "National Instruments" is listed as "PCI Slot 3@6,15,0"; I imagine this is the PXI-8360 card in the cPCI crate.

According to this table, PCI instruments should be supported by Mac OS X. That is also implied by the figure in this tutorial. However, on my system, the NI-VISA Configuration application does not list any PXI/PCI instruments. I have version 4.4 of this utility.

Is there any way to convince visaconf to scan the cPCI bus? Alternatively, can I create a static reference? Or is there some other way to access this instrument?

[TobiD]

Hi,

you're right, the card should be supported on Mac OS. Can you change the aliases or other paramters as described in this KB?

Creating and Editing VISA Aliases and Resource/Configuration Parameters on a Mac

regards

Tobias

[Keller · Accepted solution]

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for your response, it got me on the right track.

My mistake: I was not using the "Applications » National Instruments » VISA » VisaConfig"  application that the article talks about; in fact, that utility appears to have disappeared altogether in NI-VISA 4.5. I was running the "NI-VISA Configuration" application. But in snooping around the NI-VISA applications directory, I noticed the "Driver Wizard", and that solved all my problems. Even though it reported an error (??), it properly installed its .inf file in the "/Library/Application Support/National Instruments/nipal/inf" directory, and after stopping and restarting the nipal service, my card showed up in the "NI-VISA Configuration" list.

Incidentally, before your answer arrived, I was groping for other solutions, and I decided to install Windows on a second partition, using Boot Camp. (In fact, I discovered that the Boot Camp partition can be used either natively, by booting Windows, or by a VMware virtual machine running under Mac OS X - very cool!) I was able to access the board via VISA on Windows as well, but the process was a little more complicated. In addition to creating a .inf file with the Device Wizard, I also had to create a custom "chassis.ini" file for our cPCI chassis - and that is not a very well-documented process.