I am very pleased to see how much intelligent discussion my little comments have sparked. This is a very educational thread.
> Hopefully I'm not putting words in Stuarts mouth, but we're really > talking about 2 different things in this thread. Some of the comments > here are related to testing a bare board (no components soldered down > yet). In that case, the component pads are probably sufficient. > > The 2nd case, which I think is the one Stuart was initially asking > about, is for automated testing of a board which has been already > assembled. In that case, you really do want test pads on all the nodes > and preferably on one side of the board. We used to do that at a place > I worked and it was pretty cool. They'd stick a fully assembled > analog/mixed signal board into the tester and catch nearly all of the > boards with manufacturing (placement/soldering) defects. Thanks, Dan. I am indeed talking about testing fully assembled boards, not raw PCBs. That's why probing the component pads isn't possible or applicable. Stuart
