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| Click here to select a new forum. | | DIAG68K | Posted by: WillJac on 2026-09-04 11:45:18
I would like to provide free to the community an amazing diagnostics utility we have been working on for the 68K Macs including the II family. Currently this is for the IIci and IIsi but other machines are being added. The author has named this diagnostics utility DIAG68K (D68K). It is a ROM image that you write to a ROM Simm with a ROM Simm programmer and boot your machine with it. It is menu driven with the keyboard so you have to connect it to a monitor from the built in monitor port.
This uses TechStep code that is in the standard ROM along with the addition of the extra code from the TechStep cartridges, uses other built in machine diagnostic code, some custom written code and modifications to others to run a series of tests on all parts of the machine.
Note this is in beta and still has a lot of work to be done but it is a very stable utility that we would like others to test and see what can be done along with providing feedback.
Thanks | Posted by: zigzagjoe on 2026-09-04 14:31:27
This is interesting, and not trying to take away from the work that was done... but it seems like this needs so much of the machine working and basically sane that you'd be most likely to get a no boot if there's anything wrong? I'm guessing this is instrumenting the built in test manager code which is what techstep interacts with; that needs not much more than MDU, CPU, ROM, SCC, and VIA in order to work. I'm assuming this is going to add at least RAM, RBV, RAMDAC, ADB, and the private (V)RAM data path to those requirements.... that's rather a lot.
Any thought on incremental functional testing in a similar fashion to a Commodore 64 dead test? Do the most basic testing first, and report status by any means possible - screen blinks, speaker pops/tones, activity LED, whatever requires the least amount of components working - and proceed to test increasingly complex functionality until you either A) die due to a problem or B) have tested enough functionality that you can inform the user in a more verbose fashion. Similar to POST codes used on PCs. That way you get a little more granularity if something's wrong. | Posted by: frontein1 on 2026-09-04 19:13:07
Any thought on incremental functional testing in a similar fashion to a Commodore 64 dead test? This is a really good idea, and @WillJac and I bounced this around initially. But yes, I think this is a real possibility. Right now how DIAG68K is built is it really does very minimal power on testing. But it does assume some working hardware, such as: on-board video, ADB, etc. And you can actually follow that chain back to other needed hardware too.
Maybe a good solution here is just like the C64. At power on do some small tests, output by any means possible, and incrementally as they succeed lead to the menu. | Posted by: frontein1 on 2026-09-04 20:02:06
Oh and I should add, the goal is to also be able to interface with the DIAG68K via serial cable. So this will be another step in the direction of diagnosing without all the right hardware working. | Posted by: WillJac on 2026-09-04 20:51:33
New version is available v0.96 Build 4
Changes are:
I tried to make the UI a bit more responsive.
So hopefully now there aren't as many pauses while waiting for the screen to refresh or for tests to cancel.
Cleaned up the menus just a bit to be more in line with the tests. | Posted by: Fred1212 on 2026-09-05 01:19:14
Nice work | Posted by: WillJac on 2026-09-13 11:59:16
New version is available. Added from Dead Tests to be done at power up to be sure certain functionality is available. | | 1 |
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