Design & Test Technology offers a test instrument as an application of the MeasureBoard Test System.  It is an LTO Tape Head/Tape Media Tester, designed for testing both the read/write heads and the tape media used in magnetic tape drives, in a simulated drive environment.

This instrument will test both inductive and MR tape heads at recording densities up to 140 kfpi. Typically, 1/2 inch tape media is moved at 3 m/s for test purposes. This Test System is designed to be used in a number of departments, including Production Test, Quality Assurance, and R&D. Its purpose is to enable these departments to obtain the data required for process control, QA inspection, source qualification, and design improvements.

This test instrument is typically understood as divided into three modules.

The first is the interface module.  This is the sensor buffer/preamp assembly. In this application, the sensor is an eight channel magnetic read/write head.  The module circuitry buffers the input read/write signals and provides a 0.5 volt output signal back to the test module

The second section is the test equipment module, the core of the tester.  It provides the measurement electronics for the eight independent test channels and the embedded computer.  The test electronics themselves are located on the two MeasureBoards, which are 8 inch X 11 inch Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCBA) that have 4 independent test channels each.  The two Measurement Boards and an embedded computer are combined into a Measure Board Stack using a PCI inter-board bus.  This board stack, along with the two supporting signal buffer/filter boards and mounting hardware, make up an 8 Channel Measurement Module,  sized approximately 14 in X 5 in. X 10 in.

The third Module is the Software, which is in two components - Control Software and the Host Program.  The control software consists of the low level routines and time critical processing which are handled by the embedded processor in the Measure Board Stack.  The user interface and all other signal conditioning and data storage are located in the Host Program which runs on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP based Personal computer.

This test instrument, The LTO Tape Head/Tape Media Tester, is based on the Gauss Tape Transport (see Photo). As a reel-to-reel transport, it is useful as a lab instrument and is a good demonstration of the MeasureBoard Test System.

The NGT Measurement Electronics are designed to operate with a wide variety of tape transports. The transport is typically supplied by the customer to D&TT which will then integrate it with the measurement electronics for a turnkey system. To date, test systems have been built with a variety of transports, including:

o Cartridge-based transport

o Reel-to-reel transport

o Loop-based transport

o Pancake-based transport

The MB3 board set has a general purpose interface that allows interfacing directly to the tape drive itself. By accessing the tape drive  manufacturer’s low-level commands for controlling the tape and head motions, the Host software can then treat the tape drive the same as any other tape transport for test purposes.