PCMCIA 5102 not compatible in windows 7, USB equivalent / Tektronix TDS 2024B usage

Question

Hello,
I am given a 8.5 labview program that works in windows xp and uses PCMCIA 5102 digitizer card for signal acquistion and showing it in graphs.
we are converting that code to LV2012 and win 7.
i just found out that the pcmcia 5102 is not supported in win 7 anymore and is showing niscope error and cannot install any drivers for it.
we are using the 4 channels on it (ch0,ch1, trigger,clock) and these cards are also obsolete.
is there a USB equivalent for it or even 3rd party with labview drivers, ni has all the usb new ones that have only 3 inputs. how to solve this problem?
we have tektronix tds2024b, how can i use this as an equivalent to PCMCIA 5102 and acquire and show on labview graphs real-time. I didnot program any instrument before ..
one thing observed is that the oscilloscope graphs cho, ch1, trigger nicely even though i removed the clock input. i donot understand the use of clock input if it can graph all the three signal as expected without clock. is that clock only required when using a NI digitizer? 
plz help.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hey freemason,
You are correct that the PCMCIA 5102 is not compatible with Windows 7, however we do have the USB-5132 and USB-5133 which have a USB connection and should be (if the program uses the NI-SCOPE driver) a drop-in replacement.  They do not have the PFI lines that the 5102 does, but it sounds like you were only using that as an external clock and the 5132/3 have a 50MHz/100MHz internal clock respectively that is both faster and more accurate than the internal clock on the 5102.
There are also PCI options if you do need those PFI lines.
As for whether you can use the Tek TDS2024b as a replacement: As Dennis said, unless you used the IVI driver in the program, there will be a lot of work to convert the code to use that scope.  There is a driver for it, and if you're ever interested if a driver exists for a 3rd party instrument, you can go to the following link and search; the Tektronix TDS series is first in the list of most popular drivers.
http://www.ni.com/downloads/instrument-drivers/
Finally, that PCMCIA card has a 20MHz clock inside of it that you should be able to use for a sample clock, so an external clock isn't required.  If you had a more accurate clock you wanted to use or maybe if you wanted to synchronize the card with another one, that would be the main reason to use an external clock source.
Hope this helps!
-Jim B
Applications Engineer, National Instruments
CLD, CTD