Design of a Test Set for Measuring Large-Scale-Integration Systems

The ability to manufacture large-scale-integration (LSI) systems necessitated our building a special type of test set. The set is capable of controlling test equipment to produce measurements, storing the results, performing arithmetic operations on the results, and then carrying out logical decisions. The set contains a PDP8/S computer to which is interfaced a teletype unit, an A/D converter, various power supplies, voltage and current measuring modules, a prober, and a matrix for inter-connecting the test equipment to the prober. All of these interfaced units are under computer control. Most of the interfaced units are of standard design, however, because of the incompatibility of logic levels and coding, a fairly complex DTL interface medium had to be constructed. Software associated with this test set consists of programs that perform the functions of peripheral control, electronic function block testing, and data analysis. The results of the data analysis are used to automatically select a working element in each group on the LSI slice. A simple language has been devised to facilitate the use of this library of routines.