JTAG Technologies has extended its JTAGLive family of boundary-scan powered design and repair debug tools for printed circuit boards. JTAGLive Buzz-plus is an extension to the free-of-charge Buzz tool that was launched in 2009. While Buzz allows the user to sample activity on boundary-scan pins and test continuity of nets across a circuit board - and is free to all users - Buzz-plus extends the capability with a ‘seek and discover' mode that effectively learns the network of nodes for a specified net connection. The JTAGLive family capitalises on the boundary-scan resources found on today's high-end circuit boards. There is no need for a netlist since the tool uses just BSDL models of the compliant parts (usually freely available from IC vendors) to give the user access to all of the I/O pins for driving and sensing. The user can define up to two boundary-scan chains and can quickly verify chain integrity through hardware adapters from Xilinx, Altera, JTAG Technologies and the dedicated JTAGLive controller/interface. As well as the new Buzz-plus option, the JTAGLive family includes additional extended modules ‘Clip', which allows the engineer to create more customised logic cluster test patterns, and ‘Script', a powerful command and control structure to manipulate and sense cluster I/Os utilising the popular Python language.
