IC-Tester

This article supplies a condensed description of a stand-alone IC tester for SSI (small-scale integration) logic ICs (with up to 24 pins) from the well-known 74xx and 40xx series. The elementary building blocks that make up the design are an 80C535 microcontroller, a large EPROM, an LCD display, a small keyboard and an RS232 interface. The latter allows the tester to receive new IC test vectors produced by a test vector compiler which runs on a PC. Another DOS program allows new test vectors to be tested using the same RS232 interface, so you don’t have to re-program the system EPROM or dig up an EPROM emulator.