Since the pump broke I’ve been working on the reactor controller / data acquisition system. This will allow us to record:
Voltage reading (via voltage dividers and ammeter shunts); low power voltage reading from magnetometer, thermocouple, pressure gauge, etc; on the output side: voltage control of power supplies, servos for needle valves, triggering IGBTs; Our ion gauge has the option of digital over RS485.
I purchased an NI USB-6008 (manual, driver):
Unfortunately the driver for this does not work with Snow Leopard yet. I’ve already upgraded my main laptop to Snow Leopard and I really don’t want to downgrade to Leopard so I dug up and old G4 running Tiger. Had to swap out a broken CD drive:
This G4 will be a challenge to upgrade to Leopard as it lacks a DVD drive, although it may be possible to install without DVD.
I was able to install the driver NI-DAQmx_Base. I opened up NIdatalogger and performed a successful grab of voltage data on the analog input:
I would like to get this ruby adapter working. So far I can’t get it to build on Tiger (it makes it further on Snow Leopard). I’m working with the creator to get it installed and working:
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 
Problem:
The USB-6008/9 is reading around 1.4V in referenced single-ended (RSE) mode when no signal is connected. Is this expected?
Solution:
Yes, when there is no signal connected to the analog input of the USB-6008/9, a reading of around 1.4V in RSE mode is expected. This is due to the internal resistor network.
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/C7C4AB4BD256EF0386257013001650E7
UPDATE: looks like there is now a hack to get this installer running on Snow Leopard:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=250&thread.id=51512
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