[Danny Diaz]

Here's the deal:

1. NI-VISA is necessary for LabVIEW to read/write the Serial bus.
2. NI-VISA is installed as a result of:
   1. Installing LabVIEW on the Mac
   2. Installing the NI Driver CD
   3. Installing NI-VISA by itself.

In your LabVIEW package for FIRST, you are provided with 4 disks - One disk is LabVIEW, and the other 3 disks are the NI Driver CD. If you installed the NI Driver CD after installing LabVIEW, you don't need to do anything further. Otherwise, pop in the first Driver CD and go ahead and install it. That will install everything you need.

In order to determine if NI-VISA is installed on your computer, open up MAX (Measurement and Automation eXplorer), expand the "Software" twistie in the upper-left, and check to see if NI-VISA is in the list. If it's in the list, stop right there. If it's not in the list, or if you do not have MAX installed, then you need to install NI-VISA.

-Danny