logic probe

This is a logic probe. You connect this thing to a hardware resource on pc board. They have different probe for different applications. This thing reads the electrical signals going into and out of the hardware resource 'ie computer processor. These processors and other controllers have internal address and data lines as well as control and status lines. These lines are connected to internal registers that hold the 1's and 0's in those registers that relate to the address, data, control and status lines of the hardware resource (IC) chips and chip sets that belong to the paticular processor.

The only thing you'll need after that is the data book that goes with the IC. You'll need this for the instructions on how to initialize registers to make the darn thing work.


logic analyzer

This picther shows what shows up on the screen when the above probe is connected to a logic analyzer. What shows is timeing diagram. At the far left blue column on the analyzer screen are the probe line names created by the technician. It shows the up then down lines representing the 1's and 0's of the probe scensing.







schematic

This last picture is the accual hardware that the probe hooks up too. Note the computer chip located in the middle of the schematic. This is what the logic probe hooks up to. This looks more like a micro controller rather than a micro processor. But the lines going to the processor/controller are the address, data, control and status lines I was refering to in the above logic analyzer pic.