I have been looking into getting either a ABI System 8000 or a Qmax QT200. These things test mixed mode circuit boards concentrating on the Digital ICs and Analog ICs and a few other things. Does anyone have any experience with these machines? Good or bad news about them. The ABI unit seems like it might be very helpful in repair of circuit boards. I mainly need to service Arcade Game boards. It uses 5 methods to test the chips. 1. Automatic IC identifier.
- Checking for shorts between any of the pins. 3. Back drives the chip and applies a truth table test to known chips. 4. Compares V-I to patterns stored or to known working boards. 5. Tests for temperature difference between known working chips. I think there is a few other things in there that it does. I have been looking at them for quite a while since they cost between ,000-,000 each. They say you can repair any board with or without a known working board using one of these things. There is a Autocon test show in Anaheim,CA and I am going to check out the Qmax. It is very hard to repair some of these boards, especially since there are many custom chips with no data sheets. These are a few other systems but almost all of them are in UK or India or somewhere else and I can't seem to get enough info from them. Is it true can these systems do what they claim? I really appreciate feedback from people who are experienced with these systems or something real similar.
Thanks Russ