TWI436203B - Testing method for automatically rebooting a motherboard and recording related debug information and rebooting device thereof - Google Patents

Description

Automatic restart motherboard and test method for recording related debug data and restart device thereof

The invention relates to a testing method and a restarting device thereof, in particular to a testing method for automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debugging materials and a restarting device thereof.

In general, in order to ensure the stability of the restart process of the motherboard, the motherboard often needs to be tested by thousands of switches before leaving the factory. The common test method is to manually switch the machine and record the relevant test data. To carry out, but this method will lead to time-consuming and labor-intensive detection time.

Therefore, an external restart card is used to automatically execute the design of the motherboard switch test. For example, a restart card of the Republic of China I270782 patent and a method for determining the timing of the test restart mechanism are designed as shown in FIG. Shown is a functional block diagram of one of the prior art restart cards 10. The restart card 10 includes a detecting unit 12, a counting unit 14, and a reset unit 16. The detecting unit 12 is configured to detect an input/output port of the completion code accessed by the Basic Input Output System (BIOS), and when the detecting unit 12 detects that the input/output port has the completion code. That is, the computer system has completed the booting process. At this time, the detecting unit 12 sends a first signal to the counting unit 14, and after driving the counting unit 14 to count the time to the set time value, a second signal is sent to the resetting unit 16, and the driving is performed. The reset unit 16 performs a cold boot restart mechanism, that is, the reset unit 16 shorts the power button of the motherboard to the power supply pin for a second, so that the system chip of the motherboard is powered off, and then the reset unit 16 shorts the power button again. At the foot, you can supply power and re-execute the basic I/O system to power on. On the other hand, if the computer system does not execute all the booting procedures, that is, it is in the state of being down, it will not drive the restarting card 10 to test the cold booting mechanism of the motherboard, so that the tester can know the boot failure state and analyze it. solve.

However, as can be seen from the above, in the prior art, even if an external restart card is used instead of the manual switch test procedure, the motherboard can only be manually restarted when the computer is down. In addition, the debug data generated when the motherboard is booted up can only be analyzed by manual recording, which will bring a lot of inconvenience to the testers.

Therefore, the present invention provides a test method for automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debug data and related restarting devices to solve the above problems.

The invention provides a test method for automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debugging data, which comprises setting a switch machine parameter; starting at least one motherboard; accumulating the number of startups of the motherboard; and reading the generated when the motherboard performs booting Decoding data; determining whether to restart the motherboard according to the debugging data and the switch parameter; and generating a switch test data according to the debug data and the number of startups.

The invention further provides a restarting device capable of automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debugging data, which comprises a setting interface for setting switch parameters corresponding to at least one motherboard; a bus transmission interface for electrically connecting An input/output system unit and a power pin of the motherboard; and a programmable chip electrically connected to the bus transmission interface and the setting interface, the programmable chip comprising a switch control unit The device is used to restart the motherboard; a counting unit is used to calculate the number of startups of the motherboard; and a debugging operation unit is configured to read, by the bus transmission interface, one of the generated ones when the motherboard is booted. Error data and determining whether to control the switch control unit to restart the motherboard according to the debug data and the switch parameter; and a recording unit for generating a switch test data according to the debug data and the number of startups.

Compared with the prior art, the present invention utilizes a programmable wafer to read the debug data generated when the motherboard is booted and the time of the switch, as a basis for judging the motherboard and generating corresponding test data for the switch. Therefore, the restart device provided by the present invention can automatically restart the motherboard regardless of whether the motherboard completes the boot process or is in a down state. In this way, not only can the switchboard stability detection time of the motherboard be greatly reduced, but also the user can directly and clearly know the statistics of the motherboard after being repeatedly switched on and off without manual recording. And can be based on the debug code generated when the machine is down or the screen of the machine to perform the corresponding crash problem.

Please refer to FIG. 2 , which is a schematic diagram of a re-installation device 100 electrically connected to a motherboard 102 according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The restarting device 100 includes a setting interface 104, a bus transmission interface 106, an image capturing interface 108, a programmable wafer 110, and a display device 112. The setting interface 104 is electrically connected to the programmable chip 110 and used to set the switch parameters of the corresponding motherboard 102, such as the on-off time preset value of the motherboard 102, the number of times of the switch test, etc., in this embodiment, the setting The interface 104 is preferably a combination of conventional mechanical setting buttons, such as Start, +, -, Stop, etc., for the user to press the setting. The bus transfer interface 106 is preferably a general purpose input/output (GPIO) transmission interface for electrically connecting to one of the input and output system units 114 of the motherboard 102 and a power pin 116, wherein the bus bar The data transmission between the transmission interface 106 and the input/output system unit 114 can be mounted on a data transmission slot (such as a peripheral component interconnection bus slot) on the motherboard 102 by a cable connection or a golden finger insertion ( PCI) slot, high-speed peripheral component interconnect bus slot (PCI-E) slot, low pin count architecture (LPC) bus). The image capture interface 108 is electrically connected to the programmable chip 110 and is electrically connected to one of the image output interfaces 118 of the motherboard 102 to capture a screen of the corresponding motherboard 102, which is preferably a video graphics array ( Video Graphics Array, VGA) connector. The display device 112 is electrically connected to the programmable wafer 110 and is used to display the power on self test (POST) of the input/output system unit 114 of the motherboard 102 to which the programmable wafer 110 is read. The error code data is provided to allow the user to clearly know the boot process of the motherboard 102. The input/output system unit 114 can utilize a basic input/output system or a unified extensible firmware interface (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). , UEFI) to perform the boot self test.

The design of the programmable wafer 110 will be described herein. Please refer to FIG. 3, which is a functional block diagram of the restarting device 100 shown in FIG. The programmable chip 110 is preferably a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip electrically connected to the setting interface 104, the bus transmission interface 106, the image capturing interface 108, and the display device 112. And including a switch control unit 120, a counting unit 122, a debugging operation unit 124, and a recording unit 126. The switch control unit 120 is used to restart the motherboard 102. The counting unit 122 is used to calculate the number of starts of the motherboard 102. The debugging unit 124 is configured to read, via the bus bar transmission interface 106, the debug data generated when the motherboard 102 performs booting, and determine whether to control the switch control unit 120 to restart the motherboard 102 according to the debug data and the switch parameters. . The recording unit 126 is configured to generate a switch test data according to the debug data and the number of startups for the user to perform subsequent detection and analysis.

It is worth mentioning that the restarting device 100 further includes a storage interface 128 electrically connected to the programmable chip 110 and preferably a memory card slot for transmitting the switch test data to a storage medium, such as Secure Digital (SD) memory card, etc. In addition, the restarting device 100 provided by the present invention can also be applied to the on/off test of a plurality of motherboards. In this application, the restarting device 100 can further include a switching interface 130 electrically connected to the programmable Wafer 110 and preferably a set comprising 18 The operation interface of the dip switch enables the purpose of performing the restart test of the programmable chip 110 on different motherboards in a simultaneous multiplex manner. The following is a detailed description of the process steps for the restart device 100 to automatically restart the single motherboard 102 and record the related debug data. As for the test of the plurality of motherboards, the following can be deduced according to the following description, so Narration.

Please refer to FIG. 2, FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 . FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a method for automatically restarting the motherboard 102 and recording related debug data by using the restart device 100 shown in FIG. 2 according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. flow chart. If the restarting device 100 is to be used for the on/off test of the motherboard 102, the setting interface 104 is first used to set the switch parameters (step 400), which is to perform the preset time and shutdown time of the corresponding motherboard 102. The setting of the preset value. Then, the user can use the switch control unit 120 to activate the motherboard 102, that is, step 402, and the execution of step 402 can be triggered after the user presses the Start button included in the setting interface 104, wherein the host is started. The mode of the board 102 can be implemented by a common cold booting method, that is, the switch of the bus board transmission interface 106 and the power pin 116 can be used to control the switch of the motherboard 102 in a short circuit manner.

After the motherboard 102 is started, the counting unit 122 calculates the number of startups of the motherboard 102 (step 404), and the debugging operation unit 124 reads the debugging data generated when the motherboard 102 performs booting (step 406). The debug data referred to herein may preferably include the debug code data read via the coupling of the bus transfer interface 106 and the input/output system unit 114, and if the operating system is in error. Machine painting In the face (such as the blue screen of Windows), the debug code data can be displayed via the display device 112, and the crash screen can be captured by the image capture interface 108 and stored in the recording unit 126. In the switch test data, the user can learn the data of the input and output system unit 114 and the operating system through the test data of the switch.

Next, the debug operation unit 124 determines whether the number of detection accumulations of one of the debug codes in the debug code data is greater than a specific value (step 408). For example, if the specific value is set to 5 times, if the detection accumulation number of a certain debugging code (such as 3C) is greater than 5 times, the debugging operation unit 124 determines that the motherboard 102 is in the down state, therefore, Step 412 is performed; otherwise, step 410 is performed, that is, it is next detected whether the read debug code data has a debug completion code (such as 00) and whether the actual boot time of the motherboard 102 is greater than Or equal to the preset value of the boot time (for example, 15 seconds). If not, it means that the motherboard 102 has not completed the booting process, then step 408 is executed again, and the loop is repeated until the debug completion code and the host are detected. The actual boot time of the board 102 is greater than or equal to the preset value of the boot time or it is determined that the motherboard 102 is in the down state.

When the debug completion code is detected and the actual boot time of the motherboard 102 is greater than or equal to the boot time preset value, the debug operation unit 124 similarly performs step 412, that is, the recording unit 126 The debug data and the number of starts generate the test data corresponding to the test of the test, such as using the "start number" and "corresponding debug code" field table to generate statistics to allow the user to be clear Know the Lord In this test, the board 102 normally completes the booting process or is in the state of being down, and also allows the user to perform the corresponding downtime problem according to the debug code generated when the machine is down.

Finally, in the case of restarting the motherboard 102, after completing the recording of the test data of the switch, the debugging operation unit 124 controls the switch control unit 120 to turn off the motherboard 102 (step 414) and starts executing step 416, that is, detecting It is determined whether the debug code data has a shutdown debug code (such as FF) and whether the actual shutdown time of the motherboard 102 is greater than or equal to the preset value of the shutdown time (for example, 5 seconds). In step 416, if the shutdown status code cannot be detected and it is determined that the actual shutdown time of the motherboard 102 is less than the preset value of the shutdown time, the representative board 102 does not successfully complete the shutdown procedure, so the debugging unit is 124 will perform step 414 again to turn off the motherboard 102 until the shutdown debug code is detected and it is determined that the actual shutdown time of the motherboard 102 is greater than or equal to the preset value of the shutdown time. At this time, the debugging operation unit 124 can determine that the motherboard 102 has completed the shutdown process. In this way, the debugging operation unit 124 then performs step 402 again, so as to start the next power-on test, and thus loop until it reaches The number of tests set by the user.

Compared with the prior art, the present invention utilizes a programmable wafer to read the debug data generated when the motherboard is booted and the time of the switch, as a basis for judging the motherboard and generating corresponding test data for the switch. Therefore, the restart device provided by the present invention can automatically restart the motherboard regardless of whether the motherboard completes the boot process or is in a down state. In this way, not only can the switchboard stability detection time of the motherboard be greatly reduced, but also the user can directly and clearly know the statistics of the motherboard after being repeatedly switched on and off without manual recording. And can be based on the debug code generated when the machine is down or the screen of the machine to perform the corresponding crash problem.

The above are only the preferred embodiments of the present invention, and all changes and modifications made to the scope of the present invention should be within the scope of the present invention.

10. . . Restart card

12. . . Detection unit

14. . . Counting unit

16. . . Reset unit

100. . . Restart device

102. . . motherboard

104. . . Setting interface

106. . . Bus transmission interface

108. . . Image capture interface

110. . . Programmable wafer

112. . . Display device

114. . . Input and output system unit

116. . . Power pin

118. . . Image output interface

120. . . Switching machine control unit

122. . . Counting unit

124. . . Debug unit

126. . . Recording unit

128. . . Storage interface

130. . . Switching interface

400, 402, 404, 406, 408, 410, 412, 414, 416. . . step

Figure 1 is a functional block diagram of a prior art restart card.

2 is a schematic diagram of a restarting device electrically connected to a motherboard according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is a functional block diagram of the restarting device shown in Fig. 2.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing a method for automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debug data by using the restart device shown in FIG. 2 according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

100. . . Restart device

102. . . motherboard

104. . . Setting interface

106. . . Bus transmission interface

108. . . Image capture interface

110. . . Programmable wafer

112. . . Display device

114. . . Input and output system unit

116. . . Power pin

118. . . Image output interface

128. . . Storage interface

130. . . Switching interface

Claims (16)

A method for automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debug data, comprising: setting a switch parameter; a programmable chip starts at least one motherboard; the programmable chip accumulates a number of startups of the motherboard; the programmable The wafer reads one of the debug data generated when the motherboard is booted; the programmable wafer is turned off when it is determined that the motherboard is down during the booting process according to the debug data and the switch parameters. The motherboard; the programmable chip restarts the motherboard when it is determined that the motherboard is closed according to the debugging data and the switch parameter; and generates a switch test data according to the debug data and the number of startups . The test method of claim 1, wherein the programmable chip reads the debug data generated when the motherboard is booted, and the programmable wafer reads the basic input/output system of the motherboard (Basic) Input Output System (BIOS) or a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) generates one of the debug code data when performing Power On Self Test (POST). The test method of claim 2, wherein the programmable chip determines that the motherboard is in the process of booting according to the debug data and the switch parameters Turning off the motherboard at the machine time includes: when the programmable chip determines that the detection accumulation time of one of the debug code data is greater than a specific value, the programmable wafer closes the motherboard. The test method of claim 2, wherein setting the switch parameter comprises setting a boot time preset value of the motherboard, the programmable chip determining the motherboard according to the debug data and the switch parameter Turning off the motherboard during the booting process includes: when the programmable chip detects that the debug code data has a debug completion code and determines that the actual boot time of the motherboard is greater than or equal to the boot time When the preset value is up, the motherboard is turned off. The test method of claim 2, wherein setting the switch parameter comprises setting a preset time of a shutdown time of the motherboard, the programmable chip determining the motherboard according to the debug data and the switch parameter Restarting the motherboard when closed includes: when the programmable chip detects that the debug code data has a shutdown status code and determines that the actual shutdown time of the motherboard is greater than or equal to the preset value of the shutdown time, starting The motherboard. The test method of claim 1, wherein the programmable data generated by the programmable chip reading the motherboard is: capturing a screen of the motherboard. A restart device capable of automatically restarting a motherboard and recording related debug data, comprising: a setting interface for setting switch parameters corresponding to at least one motherboard; a bus transmission interface for electrically connecting to the host An input/output system unit and a power pin; and a programmable chip electrically connected to the bus transmission interface and the setting interface, the programmable chip comprising: a switch control unit for Restarting the motherboard; a counting unit for calculating the number of startups of the motherboard; and a debugging operation unit for reading, by using the bus transmission interface, one of the debugging data generated when the motherboard is booted And determining, according to the debugging data and the switch parameter, that the motherboard controls the switch control unit to close the motherboard when the machine is in the process of performing the booting, and determining the fault according to the debug data and the switch parameter Controlling the switch control unit to restart the motherboard when the motherboard is closed; and a recording unit for using the debug data The number of starts and a switch generating test data. The restarting device as claimed in claim 7, wherein the debugging unit is configured to read one of the basic input/output system of the motherboard or a unified scalable firmware interface to generate a debug code data when the boot self-test is performed. . The restarting device of claim 7, further comprising: a display device electrically connected to the programmable chip, the display device for displaying the debug code data. The restarting device of claim 8, wherein the debugging unit is configured to control the power on/off control unit to close the one of the error code data when the detection accumulation time is greater than a specific value. motherboard. The restarting device of claim 8, wherein the setting interface is configured to set a preset value of a boot time of the motherboard, and the debugging unit is configured to detect that the debug code data has a debug completion code. And determining that the actual boot time of the motherboard is greater than or equal to the preset value of the boot time, controlling the switch control unit to close the motherboard. The restarting device of claim 8, wherein the setting interface is configured to set a preset value of a shutdown time of the motherboard, and the debugging unit is configured to detect that the debugging code data has a shutdown status code and When it is determined that the actual shutdown time of the motherboard is greater than or equal to the preset value of the shutdown time, the control unit of the switch is controlled to start the motherboard. The restarting device of claim 8, further comprising: an image capturing interface electrically connected to the programmable chip, the debugging unit is configured to retrieve the motherboard through the image capturing interface Dang screen. The restarting device of claim 8, further comprising: a storage interface electrically connected to the programmable chip, the storage interface being configured to transmit the switch test data to a storage medium. The restarting device of claim 8, further comprising: a switching interface electrically connected to the programmable chip, the switching interface for switching the restart test of the programmable chip to different motherboards. The restart device of claim 8, wherein the programmable chip is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip.