The LabVIEW drivers are not the same between the mac and the PC. For this reason there are some special considerations that need to be dealt with. The first of course is that the DAQmx is not the same. The mac uses a slightly lower level, and not quite as friendly, driver interface known as DAQmxBASE.
The first step to using DAQmxBASE is to run the utility that installs into the DAQmxBASE folder that locates the board once it is installed. This utility finds the board and links it to the rest of the system.
The second step is to open labview, and on the tools menu, select DAQmxBASE Configuration Utility.
Build your task in the configuration utility, and make not of the name you have given your task before you save and exit.
Utilizing the task is a bit more complicated that for PC users. The most basic program requires at least 3 blocks.
Locate and drop a DAQmxBASE START block on your block diagram. Select the wiring tool and hover over the "task" connector on the upper left hand corner of the block. Right click on the connector and select "create | control"
Once you have created the control you can drop a DAQmxBASE READ block. This is a polymorphic that allows you selections similar to the PC version. If you are using multiple samples, you will have to select multiple channels, multiple samples, even if you are only using a single channel. This is a peculiraity to just the mac version.
Wire the task out from the start to the task in on the read.
Switch to the front panel. Select the text pointer tool from your pallet and type the name of the task you created into the control. This will link your task to the modules.
These are the basic steps required to do an analog input. Similar steps will be required for outputs.
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There is apparently a slight issue with the output of the data from the analog read. The data coming from the read is in a 2D double array, but is in the wrong order. You will need to locate and drop an array transpose block down before you can input the data in to a wavefor chart or other output.
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The tasks appear to be cached in memory. If you make any changes to your task, such as changing the sample rate or number of samples, you will need to close your VI and reopen it to get it to re-read the task information.
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Snow leopard (10.6) is not currently supported. The highest version of OS is Leopard (10.5) That said, their experience is that 3.3 does work, however the installers bitch up a storm. If you can get it to continue though the error messages, then reboot, it seems to work in most cases. (9/16/09)
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There is no equivelent for signal express under mac os.
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There are two methods of creating a task for digital I/O in daqmxbase. The first, static, uses the daqmxbase configuration utility to create the task, and then you simply wire the task to a daqmxbase write function. This method does not appear to be functioning at the moment.
The second method, dynamic, uses the create task block to dynamically create the task and then wire the output of this task to the write function.
The samples are located in the folder “National Instruments\labview 2009\examples\daqmxbase\dynamic\dio\” I recommend using the file “write dig port.vi” as a pattern.