Broad
Support for ATA and ATAPI Devices The ID620A supports all the
protocols that run on an IDE bus, including PIO, DMA, UltraDMA and ATAPI.
It understands the commands sets for a variety of ATA and ATAPI devices,
including ATA hard drives, ATAPI CD-ROM, DVD, CDRW, and TAPE. It can
decode these commands and their data in plain English. In addition, it
has the timing resolution to work with the fastest IDE interfaces,
including ATA/100 and ATAPI devices. Therefore, with one instrument, the
user can handle the testing and debugging needs of many peripherals.
Sophisticated
Triggering
The ID620A features a powerful state machine to implement a
sophisticated triggering system. Each state in the 8-levels state
machine is equipped with sophisticated pattern matching, event counting
and decision making logic. A counter/timer in each state allows
triggering on specific event counts or event locations, and on event
timeouts. With this state machine, triggering can be specified on
complex event sequences, such as a specific ATAPI command or a specific
string of data. In addition, the trigger event can be placed in various
positions within the capture buffer, ensuring adequate visibility around
the trigger event.
Extensive
Filtering
The ID620A uses sophisticated
hardware filters to capture only those events relevant to the problem
being analyzed. This not only conserves the high speed event capture
buffer, but also eliminates unnecessary clutter in the presentation of
data to the user. For example, the data window filter allows the user to
capture only a small window of data within a sector. Another one, the
pattern mask filter, can be used to restrict the capture of I/O
operations to user-specified task file registers.
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Continuous
Capture to Disk
The ID-620A has been designed with advanced features to address the needs of
sophisticated applications. By using PCI-bus mastering and hardware
compression, the ID620A can save captured events continuously to disk with
optimal throughput. In many cases, the high throughput provided by the
hardware support allows the user to capture all the activity on the bus for a
long period of time. This capability allows the user to generate very long
traces which may help to locate intermittent or rare events. or when used with
the powerful ID620A analysis software, provide insight into system performance
and behavior.
Bus
Monitor
With some problems, like intermittent bus hangs, it is helpful to know the
current state of the bus. By generating a simulated LED for each bus signal,
which blinks when there is a change in the current sample, the ID620A bus
monitor can provide immediate feedback on the state of the bus. The bus
monitor can be run while the analyzer is tracing bus activity in the
background.
User
Friendly Software
Innotec Design recognizes the key to a powerful analyzer lies in user friendly
software. For this reason, Innotec
Design has developed interactive control software for the ID620A which runs
under Microsoft’s Windows 98, 95, and NT operating systems. 
Through
Windows, the power of the hardware is accessible with a click of a mouse
button. Furthermore, the powerful Windows programming environment makes
possible many advanced and unique software features not found on DOS-based
systems. Easy
Setup and Customizing
The ID620A software takes maximum advantage of Windows facilities such as
dialog boxes and custom controls to provide an extremely intuitive and easy
to use interface for programming the hardware and for customizing the
display of information. For example, the user can choose colors to highlight
specific IDE bus signals, or control how much detail is displayed in the
state and command views, etc., all with a few clicks of the mouse button. In
general, the software updates the display immediately to reflect changes
made by the user. The hardware can also be setup quickly and conveniently
through dialog boxes and custom controls. In addition, after the desired
hardware parameters have been set up, the user can save them in an
initialization file which will initialize the software to the new settings
next time it runs.
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Annotation
of Trace Data
To Facilitate the documentation process, the ID620A software supports
file annotation. The user can attach a text description of the trace and
embed it in the same file as the trace. With this feature, different
users, departments, or vendors can provide additional information about
the recording, problem, or solution and be sure it will always be
included in the file.
Multiple
Synchronized Views of Data
The ID620A allows captured IDE/ATAPI events to be viewed in many ways.
Both horizontal and vertical timing diagrams are provided, as well as
state display, with disassembly at the register level, and a command
display with decode of IDE/ATAPI commands and the drive’s response
into plain English. And, unlike DOS-based products, there is no need to
switch individual views. The Windows environment allows several views of
the data to be simultaneously displayed on the same screen, each in its
own window. The ID620A even synchronizes these windows so that as the
user scrolls through the data in one window, the other display windows
follow, so that the same events can be viewed from different
perspectives at the same time.
Sophisticated
Performance Analysis
In addition to the multiple views of data described above, the ID620A
software includes multiple performance analysis modules. These analysis
modules can be run on a captured trace. All device types, including hard
drives and ATAPI peripherals are supported. Information on throughput,
access time, command turnaround time, command length, sequentially,
address locality, error and command logging, as well as a summary of
performance parameters, can be displayed in multiple windows, in both
numeric and graph formats. The user can specify which drive (master,
slave, or both), device type, and which commands are to be analyzed.
This information can assist the user in characterizing the performance
of the I/O subsystem, and in tuning both the firmware and driver of a
device for improved system performance.

Support
for Command Queuing
Command queuing is the ability of a drive to execute multiple commands
concurrently. In systems with command queuing, once a drive receives a
command, the bus could be released, allowing other drives to use the bus
or another command to be issued to the drive. This greatly improves
overall system throughput. Queued commands are tagged with an ID to
track the execution of the command. The ID620A's hardware and software
are equipped to process these tags so that it can correctly capture the
command and display a summarized view of the command.
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