laksa

I start up LabVIEW and open up your vi. Then I open up to see your block diagram and time it takes to show up. I tried this out and it took less than 3 second to see the block diagram. When I run the code the first time it takes about 3 second. But if I run the second time and subsequently, it takes less than 5 msec. Strange... I think the first time you open up a vi with daqmx resource channel, it maybe doing something in the background for initialization.. that's just my guess. But subsequent calls makes it run faster.

-laksa

You can synchronize 5 PCI-6602 by using a special cable which NI sells called RTSI cable. If you look at the PCI-6602 card, there is a little connector at the top. This is called the RTSI connector. I am not sure which NI guy you talked to and if he says it's not possible he must be an inexperience NI engineer. You can check the RTSI cables from this website:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/13605

This cable allows you to share the clock between a number of PCI-6602 cards. So, all of them can be synchronized with each other. This is true synchronization as the RTSI allows you route the clock signals from one card to be shared among the rest of the cards.

-laksa

Are you using it in TTL level format? You can use PCI-6508 or PCI-6509. Both have 96 digital IOs. They are 5V TTL level. PCI-6509 is easier to program because it can be configured by line to be input or output. You can take a look at the further specs in NI website:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/12919

I am not from NI but I have used this card extensively in our companies production floor. One thing to note is your PC must be able to support true PCI specs i.e 3.3V and 5V. Some of the PCs in our production floor are industrial PCs from Taiwan which sad to say do not provide the 3.3V line. If you face this kind of issue, PCI-6508 will be your best configuration. You can search for PCi-6508 also from NI website.

-laksa