Testing Multiple Serial Ports

[mchtower]

I'm running tests on a machine with 8 serial ports. PC Doctor only sees 2 of them (COM1 & COM2) in DOS (although all 8 are listed only 2 have addresses) and 6 of them in Windows even though all 8 appear in the Device Manager. Any thoughts on why I'm not able to test all the ports?

[fwilson]

mchtower,

They are not testable as they are emulated serial ports sharing IRQ and I/O addresses. Add on boards like DigiBoards are not testable under PC-Doctor as serial ports because they are not system devices.

We looked into providing testing for these types of serial boards some time ago but alas demand was not that high.  This doesn't help you much I know.  Does the manufacturer provide a test program?  Most of them used to.

-Fred

[mchtower]

Ok, that was somewhat helpful. However, now I'm encountering a different problem. For the ports it does see I'm getting results of "Not Supported" for the External Loopback Test. We're using SIIG CyberSerial Plus 16C550 boards. 

[fwilson]

mchtower,

PC-Doctor will only test native non shared IRQ serial ports.  Once you put one of those boards they take over the serial port functions including the base ones. Everything becomes shared and PC-Doctor will be unable to test any of them.

-Fred

[mchtower]

Fred, Ok 1 last question regarding serial ports. We are testing other machines that have a single serial port and a modem. But I don't see any way when writing scripts (in Windows) to distinguish between them ie. running the External Loopback tests on COM1 but not COM2.

[fwilson]

mchtower,

Use the GUI script editor, select the serial port and the sub-tests you want to run on it, then select the modem, com2 or whatever and deselect the external loopback test.  Keep doing this until you have a custom script that only tests the components you want in the manner you want to test them, save the script.

PC-Doctor for windows can be run from the command line invoking a script i.e. sccui.exe -script scripts\mycustomscript.xml. This is explained in detail in the sc7-userguide.pdf. The documentation is on the distribution CD.

-Fred

[mchtower]

Fred,

In the GUI script editor I can select serial port (which runs the serial port tests on all serial ports) and modem but I don't see any way to select COM2 or any other specific serial port. On the Diagnostics & Tools I can select a specific serial port or ports and run the script but I don't see any mechanism for saving a custom script on that tab.



 

[fwilson]

mchtower,

I see now, I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake.  You're right there is no way to do that in the script editor. 

The script editor is not coupled to the system it is running on, It does not enumerate devices on the system and uses generic serial port, video card or whatever tests that will then run on any system they are applied to.  It's an all or nothing proposition.

In this case the only way I can think of to automate the process would be in DOS.  This is the method used on OEM manufacturing lines.  Run the DOS product, go through and select all the tests you want to run then F2 and save it in one of the 10 PDO slots (PC-Doctor overlay.

This can be moved to the USB key or a custom CD and run in the following manner
PCDR /BA:05 /PR:a:\testlog.log
This would run PC-Doctor with the options in slot 5 of the overlay file and save a logfile to a:\testlog.log.  The permutations of this are endless (almost).

This and other exciting options are contained in the AdvancedUserGuide.pdf file on the distro CD.

-Fred

[mchtower]

Fred,

Well, you're not as slow as me I'm still confused. At the risk of being terribly redundant. We have systems with COM1 - COM8 with COM1 & COM2 on the motherboard and the rest of them on the SIIG serial cards we are using, one of which is a 4 port card. PC-Doctor does not see COM3 & COM4 (ie. they are not visible from either Script Editor or the Diagnostics tab). COM5, COM6, & COM8 all test fine in PC-Doctor, however, COM7 comes up as Not Supported even though it is physically on the same board as COM8. COM1 which again is on the motherboard returns Not Supported for the External tests and Cannot Run for the Internal tests.

In DOS the only ports that PC-Doctor sees are COM1 and COM2 so that's really not an option.

On another note I didn't see anything in the manual regarding running scripts from the command line in Windows. And one more thing, why is the mx number of scripts that can be run 500?

[fwilson]

mchtower,

There is no way to reliably test the SIIG serial cards.  These boards use shared IRQ and base I/O addresses PC-Doctor does not deal with this.  If you can test anything but the ports on the motherboard (COM1 & COM2) it is a phantom result and I would not trust it.  I would go further and say that having one of these cards installed will taint the results on the on-board ones due to the shared I/O and IRQ issue.

PC-Doctor can not reliably test serial ports in systems with these type of cards installed.  The only way to test these would be with a vendor supplied diagnostic package.  Sorry.

Are you running Service Center 7 or 7.5? the command line instructions are contained in sc7-userguide.pdf.

The iteration on the scripts is because this is a service center product not a factory product.  It is designed to diagnose problems on existing systems brought into a service center.  It can be stretched to perform manufacturing functions like you are doing but there will be trade offs.

-Fred