ique_at_home_diag.html 5.6 KB
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  <title>Diagnostics for iQue@Home</title>
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<h2 align="center">Diagnostics for iQue@Home</h2>
          
<div align="center">$Revision: 1.2 $<br>
    $Date: 2004/10/18 19:16:44 $<br>
    </div>
    <br>
 
<h3>Problem Statement</h3>
 As iQue@Home is deployed to more customers, we are encountering problems 
that are hard to diagnose.  iQue is also seeing a number of failed cartridges 
that they need help to analyze.  We plan to provide several tools to address 
these somewhat overlapping needs:<br>
 
<ul>
   <li>a diagnostic module to be included in iQue@Home that the user can
activate by clicking some button or menu item</li>
   <li>a tool that runs on linux that Tom and other iQue technical people 
can use to diagnose failed cartridges and players from internal users or RMA</li>
   <li>for unknown problems in the future, we will need the ability to write 
a custom program and get that delivered to a customer to gather information 
specific to a new problem</li>
 
</ul>
 
<h3>iQue@Home Diagnostic</h3>
 
<ul>
   <li>Runs on customer PC </li>
   <li>Linked with iQue@Home app and distributed through normal software
update (no way to dynamically deliver it separately)</li>
   <li>Delivers information by writing output either in its own log file
or the iqahc log file and then emailing that to a support address at iQue</li>
  <ul>
    <li>The email message subject line should contain the BBID and a recognizable
pattern to indicate that this is a diagnostic message.  The BBID will help
iQue match the record to the particular customer case.</li>
    <li>Any files attached to the message should be compressed to conserve
transmission time.<br>
    </li>
  </ul>
   <li>Non-destructive:  does not overwrite anything on the user's cartridge 
(other than free blocks)</li>
   <li>Collect general information about the player</li>
  <ul>
    <li>BBID</li>
    <li>Contents of<i> ticket.sys</i> file</li>
    <li>Contents of <i>depot.sys</i> file</li>
    <li>Md5sum of each of the blocks in the SKSA (the viewer bundle ID can
be deduced from the contents of <i>depot.sys</i>).  This will enable us to
detect corruption of the SKSA.</li>
    <li>Contents of iQue@Home error logs (<i>iQue@home/data/logs/error*.log</i>)<br>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <li>Collect as much information as possible about user PC configuration:</li>
   
  <ul>
     <li>CPU type and clock rate</li>
     <li>Motherboard type or at least the USB Chipset part numbers if possible</li>
     <li>Amount of memory</li>
     <li>Version of Windows</li>
    <li>Version and checksum of USB drivers<br>
    </li>
   
  </ul>
   <li>Test USB connectivity</li>
   
  <ul>
     <li>Detect presence of iQue Player on USB (verify that Chapter 9 negotiation 
worked)</li>
     <li>Reset device and check detection in a loop (<br>
     </li>
     <li>Do a loop test that sends command to the player and gets a response, 
but does not depend on the cartridge</li>
     <li>Do a loop test that passes data both directions and verifies the 
integrity of the data (may need to add "echo" command to SA1, unless we write 
on the cartridge)</li>
     <li>Report performance of data transfers in both directions</li>
   
  </ul>
   <li>Basic media check on cartridge</li>
   
  <ul>
     <li>Read all the blocks on the cartridge (this will take roughly 3 minutes)</li>
     <li>List blocks marked bad by the manufacturer (status byte != 0xff)</li>
     <li>List blocks that read with a DBE</li>
   
  </ul>
   <li>Read the FAT table entries and report the following</li>
   
  <ul>
     <li>Blocks marked bad in FAT in SKSA area</li>
     <li>Blocks marked bad in FAT in file system area</li>
     <li>FAT blocks marked bad</li>
    <li>FAT blocks with incorrect checksums<br>
    </li>
     <li>Allocation statistics:  number of files, number of blocks allocated 
and free</li>
     <li>Dump inode table and list of blocks attached to each file</li>
     <li>Correlate the information about manufacturer marked bad blocks and 
DBE read errors with the SKSA area, FAT area, and allocated files<br>
  </li>
   
  </ul>
   <li>If there is free space available on the cartridge, do a loop test
that writes one or more blocks directly using synthesized data, reads the
data back and confirms integrity</li>
  <ul>
    <li>Test patterns should include all 0, all 1, 0x5a5a and 0xa5a5.  Could
potentially do "walking ones" on a few blocks, but this is pretty time-consuming.<br>
    </li>
  </ul>
 
</ul>
 
<h3>iQue Internal Diagnostic</h3>
 
<ul>
   <li>Runs on linux or Windows</li>
   <li>Command line tool</li>
   <li>Reports information to standard out</li>
   <li>Tests run are the same as above, but no need to gather information 
about the PC</li>
   <li>Additional capabilities:<br>
   </li>
   
  <ul>
     <li>Reformat and clear the FAT table completely, so that the card reverts 
to the initial state from the manufacturer</li>
     <li>Rewrite some or all of the blocks on the card to clear read DBE<br>
     </li>
   
  </ul>
 
</ul>
 
<h3>Future Unknown Problems</h3>
 
<ul>
   <li>Tools should be launchable from customer's Windows desktop</li>
   <li>Deliver information by storing in a log file and emailing it to a
central iQue site</li>
   <li>How do we deliver these tools to the customer?</li>
 
</ul>
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