Windows Vista NI-488.2 DOS Support Primary Software: Driver Software>>NI-488.2Primary Software Version: 2.5 Primary Software Fixed Version: N/A Secondary Software: Utility Software>>Measurement & Automation Explorer
Problem: While using Windows 95, 98, ME and XP, in Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) there was an option to enable support for NI-488.2 DOS applications. Is this option available in Windows Vista? Solution: Recent versions of Windows NT for 64 bit architectures, including Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (x86-64) , Windows XP 64-bit Edition (IA-64), Windows Server 2003 (x64) and Windows Vista (x64), no longer run MS-DOS (or 16-bit Windows) applications. This means that DOS support for NI-488.2 will not be available in Vista. In Microsoft computing, a VxD is a virtual device driver. They run under the Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me operating systems, and have access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes, as well as raw access to the hardware. Prior to the advent of Windows, DOS applications frequently communicated directly with various pieces of hardware by responding to interrupts, reading and writing device memory etc. Each application expected to have exclusive and complete control over the hardware. Though Windows applications do not often communicate directly with hardware, it was the only way to write Windows drivers and still is in the real and standard modes of Windows 3.x. Despite the fact that Windows switched from running in real mode to protected mode, direct hardware access and interrupt hooking could still be done because when Windows switched to running in protected mode, it kept the single privilege level model used in real mode. This lasted all the way through Windows 9x. Windows/386 and allowed multiple MS-DOS applications to execute simultaneously. This was done by executing each legacy application within its own virtual machine. To share arbitrary physical resources among these virtual machines, Microsoft introduced dynamically-loadable virtual device drivers. These drivers solved issues relating to conflicting usage of physical resources by intercepting calls to the hardware. Instead of a machine port representing an actual device, it would represent a "virtual" device, which could be managed by the operating system. Related Links: KnowledgeBase 156AJMTI: Enable or Disable NI-488.2 DOS Support in Windows NT/ME/2000/XP KnowledgeBase 2CQJUVLX: Enable or Disable NI-488.2 DOS Support in Windows 98/95 KnowledgeBase 28PFFOXY: Will My GPIB Board Work with DOS? Developer Zone Tutorial: How a DOS GPIB Application Works Attachments:
Report Date: 07/06/2007 Last Updated: 02/22/2008 Document ID: 4B58B1B4 |
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