In article <oster-9D4263.22193428082003@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
David Phillip Oster <oster@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article <usenet-BC6161.00483229082003@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Herb Singleton <usenet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > In article <oster-EE002C.18040528082003@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > David Phillip Oster <oster@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > > 2.) National Instruments makes a PCMCIA card, the 6024e that may do
what
> > > you want, and they also have it in a PCI card version.
> >
> > I saw that - it's a nice card, but unfortunately NI doesn't sup****t it
> > under Mac OS X.
>
> <http://www.ni.com/mac/mac_daq.htm>
says that NI sup****ts its DDK under
> OS X, and <http://www.ni.com/pdf/products/us/mhw_ddk.pdf>
says the DDK
> works with E-series boards. That looks like sup****t to me.
DDK = Driver Development Kit.
NI does not currently offer a Mac OS X driver package for their cards.
The DDK provides do***entation for customers who want to try writing
their own drivers. I looked into this and discovered that it is a
non-trivial project, even if you have some experience in driver level
programming.
Also note that the sup****t provided by NI for the DDK is very limited.
From the above web pages:
"Sup****t is available only through online newsgroups, downloads, and
register-level programming manuals. Standard phone and email sup****t is
not available for the Measurement Hardware DDK."
By "online newsgroups" they mean usenet groups such as this one, and the
user forum on the NI website.
I called NI a few months ago to ask about the current state of their
sup****t for Macs. Their website seems to imply that the cards and
software are sup****ted for Macs. But when you read the fine print, you
discover that most of the sup****t is still limited to OS 9 and earlier.
LabView for OS X only talks to a small subset of their cards (the GPIB
and ethernet stuff, I think). The DDK is probably intended for
enterprise customers who have the manpower and expertise to do their own
driver development (and maybe the cash to buy partnering sup****t from
NI). The NI guy I spoke with was pretty candid. He said they are still
taking a "wait-and-see" approach on Mac OS X, watching the market.
For the project I am currently doing, we decided to go with a data
acquisition interface from InstruTECH, their model ITC-1600. This is a
nice piece of hardware, with a standalone rackmount box for the
converters, a DSP card that installs on a desktop Mac's PCI bus, and a
pair of optical cables to link the card and box. Very low noise, with
sampling rates up to 200k. Analog outputs are DC coupled, so no problem
with low frequencies. But it's not cheap, and not very ****table, so it
might not be useful for Herb's application. InstruTECH does provide a
driver package for OS X, although this is still something of a work in
progress, with spotty do***entation.
--
Julian Vrieslander
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