JTAG/BST forum

[danmcb]

Hi everyone

I was looking in here for a forum for info on JTAG and Boundary Scan testing (BST).

I have a project on the go at work to get these tests running on some boards with a lot of BGA's.

Reading through the specs about BST, it really strikes me as a technology that should be inexpensive and as easy as possible to implement on new boards.

Yet there is not that much info or cheap/free software around that I can see. You can find lots of stuff about the basic standard, but the really interesting bit is converting your netlist + BSDL files into a good set of test vectors. I cannot find any info on formats for test vector files, protocols for driving the test hardware ...

One of the main leaders in the field (JTAG technologies) seems to use a lot of proprietary file formats which are not available on the web. They also use EBST files (instead of BSDL) which makes life harder.

I think that it should be posible to develop low cost hardware (like a PIC hooked up to a serial port) and some apps that should support (say) EDIF netlists (or maybe other common formats) and BSDL files to generate some usable (maybe low speed, but cares, at first ..) solutions.

Anybody else found themselves in a similar situation? This is such a great technology, I can't believe the entry costs seem so high.

have fun

Daniel

 

[jbartos]

Suggestions:
1. This may be temporary only. In long run, there is always some choice developed.
2. Some other areas experience a similar problem, e.g. AutoCAD users, etc., Electrical Power System Analysis, etc.

 

[danmcb]

Yes, it takes time for people to come up with good solutions for this type of stuff

However, I don't think the analogy with Autocad is good:
Autocad give away a free viewer for their files, which can even be used to add comments/markups
There are cheaper alternatives that give good results if you don't need all the bells and whistles
Autocad is a product that has become a standard - not a whole genre of product. BST is now a genre, not an individual product
(and if you go to

http://www.jtag.com

and

http://www.jtag.org

you will not get the standards organisation but commercial companies)

And basically, there is no low cost entry that I have seen

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion/comment: It should not be overlooked that large businesses are supposed spend about 5% or so on "noble causes," e.g. a little give away, research, development, professional support, academic support, free-lance profession, etc.

 

[nbucska]

Suggest the new forum to the WEB Mr. <nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[danmcb]

Yes, I was thinking about starting such a forum here - although I didn't see a link about where to suggest that. Really I was interested to see how many people will be interested to contribute.

I would be interested to see an 'open source' style resource of info about file formats, different peoples experience of using different types of setups, any useful utilities or tools that people had developed and so on