For over a decade STB has supported mass storage design and engineering
groups with the best software tools for their job. The best tool
on the market is still the:
Engineering storage devices requires many different types of tools.
The SCSItoolbox is perfect for quickly and accurately confirming
design and engineering decisions.
From command compliance to regression and long term testing, to
generating SCSI level traffic, the SCSItoolbox has many uses in
the engineering lab.
- Command Compliance
Command compliance testing allows a device to be checked to insure
that legal SCSI commands are executed properly, and also to check
that illegal SCSI commands are failed in the proper manner with
the proper error codes.
Engineers working on device firmware need to check compliance
during initial development stages, and during subsequent maintenance
stages regression testing needs to be done to insure that no
change has "broken" old compliance.
The SCSItoolbox has a complete test to check command compliance
as well as reserved-bit illegal command testing.
In addition the User Defined CDB and CDB Sequencer tests allow
quick spot testing of individual commands or groups of commands.
- Compliance test
- User CDB
- DVT testing
Design Verification Testing is used to insure that all
functionality and operations of a device are tested for proper
operation.
DVT testing usually consists of many different test sequences
which can take a long time to run.
The SCSItoolbox Disk and Tape Screening/Manufacturing Test
modules allow an unlimited number of tests to be defined in
a test sequence. As these tests execute the results are logged
to an Access database, allowing in-depth analysis.
Disk or Tape Screening
- Stress testing
Device Stress testing involves operating the device at the extreme
limits of its design range.
Being able to fully define all phases of a test allows stress
tests to be tailor written for any given device.
The pre-defined tests included in the SCSItoolbox allow a large
range of flexibility in setting test parameters. And for complete
test control the Developer Toolbox (included at no charge with
the SCSItoolbox) allows any type of customized test to be quickly
written using either Microsoft Visual Basic or Visual C++.
-
Long-term testing (ORT - Ongoing Reliablity Testing)
Long-term testing procedures need to be reliable, and
need to treat each device under test as a completely independent
and isolated unit.
In addition, data collection during long-term testing needs
to be complete and use a method that lends itself to thorough
analysis.
The Disk and Tape Screening/Manufacturing Tests test each separate
device with an independent test thread. In addition, for total
isolation between devices under test each device can be attached
to it's own separate host bus adapter.
Complete data is logged to an Access data base, so no text
file interpretation is ever needed.