Re: Expansion card debugging

[cary@agora.rdrop.com (David Cary)]

>What do you debug your card in? Do you just buy an off the shelf PC or does
>something exist which is more tailored for this purpose?

When I was debugging my ISA cards, I used a cheap off-the-shelf PC and some
extender cards that merely brought all the traces to the top connector. (It
was a "desktop" case, rather than a "tower" case, and the extender allowed
me to probe all sides of the board).

I cut some of the traces and put resistors in-line all the power traces
after I fried one motherboard. Now I can directly short +5 and gnd without
any permanent damage. (The motherboard won't boot, of course, until after I
find and fix the short).

I've heard rumors of a more sophisticated extender board for PCI production
testing. Supposedly it has some sort of active analog switches on all the
non-ground lines that disconnect everything at the first sign of trouble.
It also allows software to apply/remove power from the PCI card plugged
into the extender, so you can
  plug in
  test
  unplug
  plug in the next card
with the motherboard power always on -- much faster than waiting through
the boot cycle.

I'd really appreciate any pointers to any remotely similar product, in case
I really do design a PCI card Real Soon Now.

<a href="mailto:d.cary@ieee.org">David Cary</a>
<a href="http://www.rdrop.com/~cary/">Future Technology</a>.

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