ELVIS (legacy) on 2009 Mac Pro Possible?

[bfeeny]

I am interested in hooking an ELVIS (original not the II) to a Mac Pro (2009).  My Mac Pro is running 10.10 (Yosemite) and has PCIe and USB ports.

Is there a DAQ I can use that will work?  I saw that there are PCIe 6251 and 6259 boards out there as well as a few others.  I am wondering if anyone is using legacy ELVIS hardware with a PCIe or USB based Mac running a fairly modern OSX.

It seems that NI no longer has the ELVIS Hardware Guide online (Document 373363D-01).  I was only able to find the User Guide (Document 373363B-01).  According to the Hardware Guide, there are many interfaces that support ELVIS which are also supported on OSX.  But I worry that the newer drivers may not work with older ELVIS and that older drivers may not support modern OSX since they are likely 32bit only.  But I figure if anyone has gotten things to work they would be on this forum 🙂

[Aleramir]

I would assume that it is possible to work with a NI ELVIS legacy on Mac just by connecting through USB and with the proper driver. Found this driver that might help:

http://www.ni.com/download/ni-elvis-software-2.0/472/en/

Also, I don’t think that it’ll be necessary to use a DAQ to connect it to the computer.

[bfeeny]

Aleramir,

Thank you for your reply.  Unless I am mistaken, the original Elvis (Legacy or Elvis I, whatever you wish to call it), is not a USB device.  It requires a DAQ of some sort to connect it to the host computer.  Only the newer ELVIS II is USB.

I could get a PCIe DAQ card I am guessing, and plug the ELVIS in.  I think my biggest concern is with the ELVIS drivers, can they support newer OSX and yet older ELVIS.  If I use a very old driver, maybe it doesn't support a 64bit OS like Yosemite.  If I use a newer driver, perhaps it doesn't support an older hardware device like an ELVIS I.

[Aleramir]

Did you checked the link that I sent you? I thought that maybe that driver could help. 

[bfeeny]

Aleramir,

You sent a link to the legacy drivers, which are 32 bit, and won't work on a modern OSX which is 64bit.

Brian

[Aleramir]

Sorry, that's the only ELVIS driver I could find for Mac. I don't think that there is any newer one. 

[bfeeny]

There are newer drivers for the mac.  Newer drivers for a variety of DAQ cards, as well as for ELVIS II.

Can these in some way be made to work with ELVIS I?  That's what I don't know.  I know officially they are not supported for that application, but I am curious if anyone has tried it and any results.  The ELVIS I is a great peice of hardware that is relateively easy to obtain.  It would be great to be able to continue to use these devices in a modern OSX environment.

Brian

[Aleramir]

A 32 bit software usually works fine in a 64 bit OS, have you tried with that driver? Also, I found this document, I think it may help you.

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/373292g.pdf

[bfeeny]

Aleramir,

I appreciate you trying to help, but I don't think you fully understand what is going on.

64-bit OSX CAN NOT load 32-bit kernel extensions.  You would have to reboot your computer into 32-bit mode for this to even work.

Brian

[Aleramir]

In that case I don't think that there would be any ELVIS driver available for a 64bit Mac OS. You could surely find a DAQ driver but you would need the ELVIS driver as well.