Test Connections - December 2011

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December 2011 - NewsletterFocus OnSolution SpotlightProduct HighlightIn the NewsDid You Know?

We hope you enjoy this month's issue of Test Connections which includes new product updates and news events.

Please send your comments or suggestions regarding this newsletter to marketing@MarvinTest.com.

Geotest Products Nominated for Test and Measurement World's Best in Test 2012 Awards

Every year, Test and Measurement World magazine nominates recently introducted T&M products. This year, Geotest has two products: TS-900 and GX3700e / GX3700 Vote for the TS-900 PXI Semiconductor Test System Vote for the GX3700e/GX3700 PXI FPGA cards Read about these best-in-class products and vote to help determine which product wins Best in Test!

Using LabVIEW and ATEasy to Control the GX5295

Geotest's GX5295 digital instrument with it PMU per pin capabilities can be used to characterize DC parameters and perform functional testing of digital and mixed signal devices. Read how LabVIEW can be used with the GX5295 and ATEasy’s test executive to execute DC and functional tests for device characterization testing.

Geotest Releases Software Updates for PXI Instrumentation and ATEasy

Geotest has recently released software updates for both its PXI products and ATEasy. These updates are available on our Web site.

Newsworthy Happenings

Geotest participated in multiple tradeshows in November with attendance at shows in both North America and Europe.

Looking to generate test applications faster? Open-architecture-based ATEasy is the answer. Download your no-cost 30-day trial today! Download your 30 day FREE TRIAL!

Do you need to print an HTML or Text file using an ATEasy application?Read on to learn more.

Read the blog post here.

The GX1110 Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) supports both AM and FM modulation.Click here to learn more.

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TS-900 Semiconductor Test System Geotest’s TS-900, a PXI-based, semiconductor test system has been nominated as a Best in Test entry for the Semiconductor Test category. Introduced in July of 2011 at the Semicon West show, the TS-900 Semiconductor Test System represents a new class of semiconductor test systems which takes full advantage of the flexibility and breadth of products available in the PXI market. Featuring an integral, high-performance receiver interface and utilizing Geotest’s market-leading GX5295 100 MHz digital instrument with a PMU per pin architecture, the TS-900 Semiconductor Test System offers an open architecture test platform for high-performance digital and mixed-signal test capabilities including RF test. Available in bench top or in a cart-based configuration the TS-900 offers many of
the same features and capabilities associated with proprietary ATE systems but with a substantially lower price. To vote for this product, please click here to complete the online ballot or visit the following link: http://bit.tmworld.com/vote/58. Voting ends on December 16th, so please vote today!
GX3700e / GX3700 FLEX FPGA Cards Geotest’s new GX3700e and GX3700 PXI Express and PXI FlexDIO FPGA cards have also been nominated as a Best in Test entry for the ATE/Production Test category. Introduced in September of this year, these high performance products feature Altera Stratix III devices, support I/O data rates > 700 megahertz and SerDes rates up to 1.2 GB/s. Both cards support data streaming/DMA capability. The GX3700e supports data transfer rates of over 800 MB/s with an x4 PCIe interface. Like Geotest’s other FPGA cards, the GX3700 and GX3700e feature module expansion boards, allowing users to create their own specialized interfaces. And to ensure signal integrity, the I/O connectors are part of the interface module. Users can program the GX3700 / GX3700e by using Altera’s development tools including Altera’s free, web-based Quartus II design tools. Software drivers are provided that support a wide range of application development interfaces including ATEasy, C, LabWindows, LabVIEW and Linux.
To vote for this product, please click here to complete the online ballot or visit the following link: http://bit.tmworld.com/vote/32. Voting ends on December 16th, so please vote today!

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All of Geotest's PXI products support a variety of programming environments including ATEasy, C, LabWindows and LabView. This application details how one can use LabVIEW (LV) to control a GX5295 Dynamic Digital Instrument. Additionally, this application shows how to incorporate the LabVIEW VIs with ATEasy’s test executive, providing a complete test program. The GX5295 has 32 IO channels with each channel having PMU (parametric measurement unit) capabilities. This example uses the PMU functions to perform a Connectivity test on the Device Under Test (DUT). Additional tests (functional and parametric) can be easily added using the basics detailed in this example.
Test Methodology Tester to DUT connectivity is verified by forcing a small sink current on all DUT pins (this example excludes Vcc and ground), and measuring the resulting voltage drop across the ESD diodes on each pin. The voltage drop should be equal to the voltage drop across the PN junction of the ESD diode – approximately 0.6V to 0.75V. If the DUT is not connected to the tester, then the resulting voltage will be approximately equal to the low commutating voltage (sinking a current) specified for the pin’s PMU. The commutating voltage in this example is set to +5V and -2V. Device Under Test (DUT) The DUT is a 20-pin octal latch (Figure 1). The DUT is installed in a 20-pin TSSOP socket, which is mounted to a demonstration board. The board routes all of the GX5295 signals to the DUT socket. In addition to providing the IO interface, the GX5295 is configured to provide Vcc using one of the four auxiliary PMU channels available on the GX5295.
Figure 1: Device Under Test (DUT) – Octal Latch (ATEasy GUI Interface) The DUT board also provides three different fault insertions switches; S2 inserts an open to pin 2 (Qout 1), S3 places a short between pin 5 (Qout 2) and pin 6 (Qout 3), and S4 shorts pin 9 (Qout 9) to ground, as depicted in Figure 2 below. Figure 2: DUT Fault Insertion Using LabVIEW with the GX5295 The following example was created using LV 7.1. A VI was created that accepts three arrays of clusters which define the DUT input pins and signal names, the output pins and signal names, and the Vcc pin (and signal name). Also passed into the array is the GX5295 PXI slot number, and the connectivity pass/fail parameters. The output of the VI is an array of clusters listing the signal names (which can be correlated to the input cluster arrays in order to find the DUT pin numbers), the measured connectivity voltage for the signal, and a connectivity pass/fail LED indicator. These VI panel and parameters are shown in Figure 3 below. The connectivity VI wiring diagram is shown in Figure 4a and Figure 4b. While a complete description of the VI’s operation is beyond the scope of this article; in summary, the VI will set the Vcc to 0V, force -0.5mA on each DUT pin, and then measure the resulting voltage on each of the DUT pins. The resulting voltages are then recorded in the output cluster array and compared to the pass/fail parameters which is passed into the VI. The results of the comparison are recorded in the output cluster array. Results of a good connectivity test are shown in Figure 5 below. Results of a failed connectivity test are shown in Figure 6 below after setting the S2 and S4 fault switches. Figure 3: LabVIEW Panel for testing DUT connectivity Figure 4a: Connectivity VI Wiring Diagram Figure 4b: Connectivity VI Wiring Diagram (cont'd) Figure 5: Connectivity Test Passed Figure 6: Connectivity Test Failed (failures injected) Using LabVIEW with ATEasy Control and test execution of this application can be done via the GX5295’s ATEasy driver or via the LabVIEW VIs as shown above. Figure 7 shows how the GX5295 can be controlled using its ATEasy driver. Figure 7: Using the ATEasy Test Executive to control the GX5295 Connectivity test To manage test execution using the LabVIEW VIs, the working VIs can be imported into ATEasy using the LabVIEW VI Import utility which is part of ATEasy's tools package (Figure 8). A VI call from within ATEasy can be configured so that the LV panel is hidden, or made visible. Figures 9, 10 and 11 show ATEasy's test log output as a result of running the LabVIEW Connectivity VI with the panel hidden (Figure 9) and with the panel visible (Figure 10 and Figure 11). ATEasy's test log also shows a "Passed" connectivity test (Figures 9 and 10), and a "Failed" connectivity test (Figure 11). In each instance, the measured values and the pass/fail indicators can be correlated between the LabVIEW VI, and ATEasy’s test log output. Expanding this application to include DC parametric and functional tests is simply a matter of importing additional LabVIEW VIs into ATEasy that support these tests. Figure 8: ATEasy LabVIEW VI Import Utility Figure 9: ATEasy Output of LabVIEW Connectivity VI – LabVIEW Panel is hidden Figure 10: ATEasy Output of LabVIEW Connectivity VI – LabVIEW Panel is displayed Figure 11: ATEasy Output of LabVIEW Connectivity VI, Failed Condition

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New Software Updates
Geotest has recently released software updates for several PXI products as well as an update for ATEasy 8.0. A summary of these updates is listed below:

HW 4.5: New API for interrupts, support for MSI interrupts

GxChassis 2.0: Support for GX7100 trigger, fan, pitch/roll enhancements, panel UI enhancements, updated documentation

GXPS 3.0 – Geotest power supply enhancements: Fix timeout issues, updated calibration license support, support for LV real-time/Linux, updated documentation

GtDio6x 1.1 – GX5960 instrument: Support for new PMU function, support for CalEasy calibration, new calibration functions, GX7005/GX7015 support, updated documentation

GtDio/DioEasy 4.1.54 – GX5295 instrument: Support for new I/O pin functions, support for per channel I/O control, GX5050 memory I/O fix, calibration API updates, documentation updates

GxFpga 2.1 – GX3700 instrument: Support for Stratix III EP3SL50F780C3N and the newer EP3SL70F780C3N, revised interrupt support, support for Linux and LabVIEW – Real Time

ATEasy 8.0 148: Major release, many v8 issues fixed with this release. If you are currently using v8, we recommend that you update to release 148.

Click here to download these updates.

New Product Brochure
Geotest has just recently introduced a new PXI Products Brochure which provides an overview of all of Geotest’s 3U and 6U PXI products as well as our software products including ATEasy, DIOEasy, DtifEasy, and WaveEasy. You can download the brochure here or if you would like a printed copy, please contact us.

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Events

November was a busy month for Geotest and tradeshows. We participated in a number of shows and seminars including productronica in Munich, the Silicon Valley Test Workshop in Santa Clara, the International Symposium for Test and Failure Analysis in San Jose, and a technical seminar in Paris, Innovative Applications Using PXI Instrumentation.

We would like to thank our distributor in Germany, Schneider & Koch for coordinating and managing the show at productronica as well as our representative in Northern California, Robson Technology for assisting with the shows in Santa Clara and San Jose.

At all of these events, we welcomed the opportunity to meet with both current and new customers to discuss present and future test needs.

The Schneider & Koch and Geotest Team at Productronica

For a list of future events visit the events page on the Geotest website.

Trade Publication News

Geotest’s GX1034 and FPGA PXI cards are highlighted in the December issue of Evaluation Engineering. Tom Lecklider’s article, "Unique PXI Test Support" discusses the unique features associated with Geotest’s GX1034 Standards module as well as how high performance FPGA cards such as the GX3700 and the PXImc standard are advancing the capabilities of PXI test systems. Click here to read the complete article.

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One method for printing an HTML file from within an ATEasy application is to use the ALog control. This can be done as follows:

1. Create a form and uncheck the form Visible property.
2. Place an ALog control in the form and set it's PlainText property to False for HTML or True for text file
    printing.
3. Create a public procedure with one parameter that contains the location and name of the HTML file to be
    printed.
4. The procedure should load the form in Modeless mode, set the logPrint.LocationURL to the HTML file location,
    call logPrint.PrintLog and then return.

The example that accompanies this KB article is located here: Q200180.zip. In the example the form used to print the HTML file is called PrintHTMLForm. The public procedure used to call the form and print the file is called PrintHTML(). The same code can be used to print TEXT (log) files. The procedure code is detailed below:

PrintHTML(sFile)
  {
! Declare a PrintHTMLForm form variable called frmPrintHTML

Load frmPrintHTML, False, 0  !Load the PrintHTML form
DoEvents()   !Process all pending operations
frmPrintHTML.logPrint.LocationURL=sFile  !Set the URL of the file to be printed

!Wait for the file to be loaded
while frmPrintHTML.logPrint.ReadyState <> alogReadyStateComplete
  DoEvents()
endwhile

frmPrintHTML.logPrint.PrintLog()  !Print the file
Unload frmPrintHTML
frmPrintHTML= Nothing
  }

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Test Connections - December 2011

Geotest Products Nominated for Test and Measurement World's Best in Test 2012 Awards

Using LabVIEW and ATEasy to Control the GX5295

Geotest Releases Software Updates for PXI Instrumentation and ATEasy

Newsworthy Happenings

Events

Trade Publication News

Enter message in space below

Product Lines

Resources

About Marvin Test Solutions

Contact Us

Aircraft

Weapons Systems

Maintenance Levels

GENASYS

GENASYS Benchtop

GENASYS Semi

GENASYS

GENASYS Benchtop

Commercial

Military

GENASYS Rugged

Test Connections - December 2011

Geotest Products Nominated for Test and Measurement World's Best in Test 2012 Awards

Using LabVIEW and ATEasy to Control the GX5295

Geotest Releases Software Updates for PXI Instrumentation and ATEasy

Newsworthy Happenings

Geotest Products Nominated for Test and Measurement World's Best in Test 2012 Awards

Using LabVIEW and ATEasy to Control the GX5295

Product News

Newsworthy Happenings

Events

Trade Publication News

How to Print an HTML/TEXT File from within an ATEasy Application

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Product Lines

Resources

About Marvin Test Solutions

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