Each National Instruments card is delivered with a CD-ROM that contains the NI-DAQ software. This software must be installed on the target machine before any hardware is installed and before installing the V+/National Instruments I/O Driver. By installing the NI-DAQ software, all of the drivers and utilities that will be needed will be available on the target system. The V+/National Instruments I/O Driver is compatible with NI-DAQ software version 6.0 and higher.
The NI-DAQ installation program will run automatically whenever you insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive. If it does not run automatically, you can run setup.exe from the root CD-ROM drive. Once the installation program has launched, follow the instructions given in the program and for most typical installations, use the default settings. Only the driver files are required for the V+ I/O driver.
After the NI-DAQ software has been installed, you may now insert the hardware into the system's expansion bus. Make note of any address, DMA, or interrupt jumper/switch settings on the cards before installing them. In the case of cards like the PC-DIO96, it will be necessary to manually configure the card by selecting a base I/O address and an interrupt. Other cards, like the PC-1200AI are fully plug-and-play and require no manual jumper/switch settings. Refer to the User Manual for the particular card you are using for detailed information on configuring the hardware.
During boot-up, Windows will attempt to plug-and-play the National Instruments cards and install the proper drivers for each card. In cases like the PC-1200AI, the driver should be loaded by the plug-and-play software with no further user action. In cases like the PC-DIO96, the driver will need to be loaded manually by opening the Window's Control Panel and selecting Add New Hardware. The driver for the card should appear in the list of drivers given for Data Acquisition Devices. When installing or removing National Instruments cards, it is a good idea to double-check the loaded drivers by looking at the Device Manager tab of the System Properties window. A driver for each installed National Instruments card should appear below the Data Acquisition Devices heading.
Insert the V+/National Instruments I/O Drvier diskette into a floppy drive and run setup.exe from the root directory of the diskette. This will launch the installation program to copy the files and configure the system settings for this driver. In typical cases, it will not be necessary to change any of the default settings in the installation program. Once the installation program has completed, the I/O driver is ready to use.