Intro

Every electronics design engineer use hundreds of electronic components in their projects. All of these parts are manufactured, characterized and tested by the factory and shipped to the distribution chain with quantities in millions each month. We all are used to have some sort of datasheet or a document that shows the expected performance parameters and operation limits, for each of these tiny and different components. But few actually in practice know how these datasheets are created and how are those numbers in parameter tables are acquired.

There are dedicated instruments and parameter analyzers for development and small scale production purposes, which are often a glorified and heavily optimized multi-channel SMUs. They existed for decades, going from pretty old Agilent 4142B to current Keysight B1500A or Tektronix/Keithley 4200A . But what if factory floor require something fast and able to measure a hundred devices at once for high testing speed? For such specialized testers come into play that may have hundreds of DUT test channels with fixturing and hot-plug capabilities to integrate into production floor testing infrastructure.

Such testers exist even for complete PCBA and devices, especially mass market common goods. Advantest is one of the big players on this market. Test equipment enthusiasts might know Advantest from their benchtop analyzers, power supply or sources, voltnuts might heard about R6581T long scale DMM but their main product are automated testers.

Thanks to Mega Salvage store today we got hands on two of the boards from one of Advantest SSD automated testers. This store specialize on recycling and selling of various electronics and industrial equipment and they had these boards from old Advantest tester. Boards in question are essentially multi-channel device power module cards, utilized in something like their MPT3000HVM tester.

Disclaimer

Redistribution and use of this article or any images or files referenced in it, in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistribution of article must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, link to this page (/pow/advssd/) and the following disclaimer.
• Redistribution of files in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, link to this page (/pow/advssd/), and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution, for example Readme file.

All information posted here is hosted just for education purposes and provided AS IS. In no event shall the author, xDevs.com site, or any other 3rd party, including Advantest be liable for any special, direct, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortuous action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of information published here.

If you willing to contribute or add your experience regarding Advantest instruments repairs or provide extra information, you can do so following these simple instructions

Teardown and quick analysis

Conclusion

If you were involved in production testing of electronics and can share some more information about history of this instrument – please do contact me and we’d love to publish that for the future test equipment enthusiasts joy.

Stay tuned for more information in future on xDevs pages. I might reverse engineer some bits and pieces from this board for better understanding what’s happening within each channel. If you are interested and want to discuss details, you are welcome at our own IRC chat server: xdevs.com (port 6010, channel: #xDevs.com) or by reaching out with email.