Rob Maskell

Hi I started LabVIEW with LV .9 Beta which was a demo released by NI in 1986. Saw this article in Byte August I think, and faxed in for a copy and played, had a big input to how LV evolved as Jeff K is a good friend, although I haven't seen the lovely man for some time now, still playing sort of, not much time these days and I have staff that are a lot better than me also. Been through all the versions, still like LV 6.1 the best, as it is simple, suits my mind well. I still have copies of all versions almost, both MAC and PC, anyone want them.?? I am stopping all this stuff shortly, been programming for 40 years almost, time to go fishing. All the best, all you LabVIEW gods.

Just a short note to say that in 1987 using LabVIEW 1.0 ( the interpreter version ) these types of Globals were made for the first time for a program I built. The program required a strip chart that ran at a clocked speed ( steady rate) while the data arrived at randon times. This use of Globals allowed a true medical like strip chart to be built in LV 1. From that original work, I expanded globals to build semaphores, Fifos etc etc all the structures now and much more, just for fun, as I imagine others are doing now with this discussion. From this original work, I started mucking with the 7400 Series TTL chip set and built using the same global technique, all the flip flops, then counters, etc etc. While living in the UK as a consultant for NI, at the first Cambridge University LabVIEW training course in 1988, a very smart student and myself almost completed the complete 7400 chip set. This work was show to all those at NI including Jeff K and his team at that time and at first was not acceptable as it did not use pure LabVIEW wiring techniques. Back then there was purist movement in the LV design group. However after some discussion it was general accepted based on the reasoning that data appears magically from DAQ, Comms, GPIB VIs without wiring and globals are just the same idea, transporting data from one realm to another invisibly. It took until LV 2 before globals appeared as primitives. I still have some of that original work. We didn't even have to wire the LV 1 while loop terminator terminal with a boolean, it was an allowed condition and the loop would run once.