Basic Micro-Scope Info
This document is to familiarize the reader with the Micro-Scope
product, and to highlight the overall points. It does not
list all of its features and capabilities of the program and
is not a substitute for the product manual or hands-on familiarity
for anyone who wants a complete understanding of Micro-Scope.
Product Description
Micro-Scope is a software program used to analyze and troubleshoot
the hardware in an IBM-type personal computer, or PC*. It
comes on a floppy diskette or CD, depending on the version.
The full product also includes a carrying case, a spiral-bound
manual, and a set of loopback plugs for testing of the serial
and parallel ports.
On the floppy or CD is a large assortment of routines to
test the various pieces of hardware and to collect information
about all parts of the system. There is also a collection
of utilities for a variety of tasks that are difficult or
impossible to perform without the proper tools. The floppy
or CD also has its own bootable operating system, the significance
of which will be detailed in the following section.
Navigation is simple and intuitive using either the mouse
or arrow keys. All of the features of Micro-Scope are arranged
for easy access on one of four main menus. The menus are:
System Configuration
Batch Menu
Diagnostics
Utilities
A fifth menu item called Quit is used to exit the program.
Each of the menus has its own section in the following pages.
Bootable Operating System
An operating system (OS) of course is what runs the system,
while the applications perform specific tasks that the user
wants the computer to do. Desktop operating systems such as
Windows and DOS try as much as possible to operate the hardware
in the background, so that the users and applications do not
have to deal with basic repetitive functions such as managing
data on the disk drives or formatting the monitor display,
and this tendency has become more pronounced with each new
version.
Indeed, if it weren't for this efficiency built into these
operating systems, PCs would be much less useful and powerful
tools than they are. However, if the application is trying
to measure or diagnose the hardware, the desktop operating
system's efficiency becomes a barrier to accurate results.
To mention just a couple of examples:
1. There is no way for an application to get an accurate
benchmark of CPU speed when the OS is allocating CPU time
as it sees fit between the diagnostic application and every
other process that might be running in the background.
2. Is a disk failure due to the drive mechanism or the controller?
Windows and DOS will report the same result in either case,
and there is no way to separate the two while looking through
the OS.
The way that Micro-Scope solves this problem is to use an
operating system designed from the ground up for a different
purpose, which is to give the diagnostic application direct
control of the hardware. This operating system, called MicroDOS,
was written in Assembler, which is a low-level programming
language that let's the programmer say with precision exactly
what the software is doing with the hardware at any moment.
MicroDOS was designed by Micro 2000 and is available only
with our diagnostic software. It is bootable of course, so
that the system under test will boot up with MicroDOS in control
rather than the system's installed OS.
An additional benefit to using our proprietary OS is that
it doesn't matter what desktop OS is on the computer. It is
not necessary for the technician to have a separate diagnostic
product for Windows, Linux, etc. because the desktop OS does
not get booted during the diagnostic tests.
System Configuration Menu
This menu provides access to a wealth of information about
the system hardware. There are 14 selections on the menu,
and just one of them, called System Information, supplies
identification on every peripheral and major hardware component
installed in the PC, conveniently organized into three screens.
The first System Information screen shows about 20 pieces
of key information about the processor, BIOS, memory and video.
The second screen has details of every disk drive in the machine,
including floppy, IDE and SCSI devices, while the third screen
lists the CD-ROM drives, ports, and information about the
keyboard, NIC, sound card, etc.
Each of the other listings under the System Configuration
window will provide detailed information about some aspect
of the hardware. Particularly useful for resolving conflicts
are the screens that show the assignment of system resources
such as IRQs, DMA, ROM addresses and I/O ports. These are
active, real-time assignments, which means that if two devices
are set to the same IRQ, both will be accurately listed in
the display. This is impossible to see with a diagnostic running
under Windows or DOS.
The menu item for Partition Table provides data about the
Master Boot Record, FAT and other disk configuration parameters
for any disk volume in the machine, information which normally
is difficult to acquire but vital for fine-tuning the drives.
Even hidden and reserved sectors are shown.
Other listings on the System Configuration menu show such
things as the CMOS contents (which can be edited), PCI bus
configuration, USB controllers, Plug-and-Play devices and
much more.
Diagnostics Menu
This menu contains the heart of Micro-Scope, which is, after
all, a diagnostic tool. Approximately 150 routines are available
to test virtually every hardware component. The many test
routines are organized into 13 main menu categories, with
numerous sub-menus. In this discussion we will only touch
on some of the highlights.
SystemBoard Tests - When this item is selected, a
whole series of tests will be done in a matter of seconds,
giving a full checkout to the CPU and all of the main chips
and control functions located on the motherboard. Individual
pass-fail results will be displayed for each function.
Memory Tests - A set of six tests are available that
can be run separately on base memory, expanded or extended
memory, and cache. This combination of tests can locate any
type of hard memory failure, including bad cells, mis-linked
bits, refresh problems, parity or addressing errors, etc.
A separate base memory test is available from the start-up
screen that tests the location where the diagnostic usually
resides. For most competing products, an error in this location
would prevent them from loading at all.
Hard Drive Tests - In addition to the expected read,
write and seek tests, Micro-Scope has a couple of innovative
features. A safe-write test is available that can perform
a write test on all or part of a drive without the loss of
data that normally occurs during a write test. A controller
test can determine whether an error is from the controller
or drive mechanism, for any drive type with an external controller.
For convenience, a few disk utilities are found here rather
than on the Utility menu. The FORMAT routine can perform a
true factory-type low-level format, and is one of the features
that truly set Micro-Scope apart from the competition. There
are also menu choices to create a 'bad sector' map, or to
set the interleave on drive types with adjustable interleave.
Tests for CD-ROM drives, floppies and other removable drives
are available from other listings under the diagnostic menu.
Port Testing - Micro-Scope has about the most comprehensive
testing available for parallel and serial ports and modems.
Each of the data lines and signal lines is individually tested,
and for modems there are also tests for dial tone and phone
line transmission.
On both serial and parallel ports, the most complete test
of the hardware requires connecting the proper loopback plug
to the port and selecting the 'external' test so that the
signals go out the connector and back in again. A set of plugs
for each of the three types of port connectors comes with
Micro-Scope.
Video Tests - Under this menu item is a sub-menu listing
ten separate tests that can be run on the video function and/or
the monitor. These include a couple of pattern tests that
are very useful for monitor alignment.
Misc. - Just to let you know they are here, without
going into detail, the Diagnostic menu also contains tests
for network cards, sound cards (including record/playback
functions), USB controllers, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and
local printer connections.
Batch Menu
The Batch menu provides access to many of the same routines
available on the diagnostic menu. The interface is different
however, in two important ways.
First, instead of going right to different groups of tests,
the menu has a submenu that allows you to select an assortment
of tests, or to select all of the tests. Once started, the
entire selection will run without further intervention, whereas
on the diagnostic menu it is necessary to select and run the
tests one at a time, starting a new test only when the previous
one has finished.
This ability to select and run a collection of tests on various
parts of the hardware is useful for doing quality control
on a new or refurbished system, or for isolating a problem
when you aren't sure which part of the hardware is causing
it.
The second difference is the choice of how many times to
run the selected tests. The options are to run once through
and then stop, to run them a specific number of times, or
to run in a loop until the test is halted manually. Another
option is to run until an error occurs and then halt.
The repeating loop of tests is sometimes the only way to
catch an intermittent problem, which by its nature will seldom
perform on cue during a single run-through of a test. Also,
for quality control of new and refurbished machines it is
common practice to let the tests run continuously for 24 hours
in a procedure called burn-in. If the hardware has a defect
it will usually show up right away, and it's better for this
to happen in the lab rather than just after the customer takes
it home.
The batch menu also has a feature for collecting reports
of the results, which can be saved in a file or sent to a
printer.
Utilities Menu
While the routines in this section do not diagnose problems
with a pass/fail result, they do facilitate troubleshooting
by providing direct access to the hardware that is often impossible
to get in any other way. Again, just the highlights will be
given.
Memory Display - This tool allows viewing the content
of a specified section of RAM in both hexadecimal code and
ASCII alphanumeric text. Among other uses, this allows the
technician to locate the system BIOS contents, identify unused
portions of the adapter ROM area, determine which parts of
the Upper Memory Area are in use, etc.
Device Editors - These provide a view of the contents
of a selected portion of a drive, and allow it to be edited.
The display is similar to the memory display, and a search
feature can locate specific content. There are three different
utilities, for floppies, hard drives and other removable-media
drives. Some uses of this tool include locating an operating
system, checking for virus code, cleaning up a corrupted disk,
etc.
Benchmarks - A benchmark is a measure of performance,
and as part of a diagnostic it allows a degree of analysis
beyond what is possible with a pass/fail result. It is the
tool of choice for spotting bottlenecks, which is important
because a system will only perform as well as its slowest
component. Boosting something other than the bottle-necked
area will usually be a wasted effort.
The benchmark utility provides measurements for the CPU and
NPU processors, fixed disks, CD-ROM drives, memory, and video
data transfer rate. The CPU benchmark is a particularly easy
way to tell if the processor is being over-clocked. Over-clocking
will improve system performance but will shorten the life
of the processor chip.
Rebuild Master Boot - Here is another feature that
has separated Micro-Scope from the masses. This utility can
write a new generic Master Boot Record to the C: drive, to
allow the system to boot up again after being infected with
a boot virus or suffering other corruption to the Master Boot
Record that prevented a boot-up.
Debugging Functions - For the technician who wants
truly hands-on control of the hardware, this collection of
utilities will allow him or her to execute specific hardware
and software interrupts on command, or to read/write single-byte
contents from specific I/O ports or RAM locations, including
those in protected memory.
Misc. - A Floppy Head Cleaner routine will exercise
the device in a particular pattern that provides the best
results during head cleaning. The Toggle Attributes utility
will change the program from color to monochrome and back
again. This is useful when working with a monochrome display
and with certain plasma and LED monitors.
Conclusion
That's our overview of Micro-Scope, the industry-leading
diagnostic tool for troubleshooting PC hardware. For more
information about any of the program features, please refer
to the Micro-Scope product manual.
* Micro-Scope is not used on Macintosh personal
computers or on IBM's mid-size or mainframe systems.
|
