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ABI and Qmax repair equipment

I have been looking into getting either a ABI System 8000 or a Qmax
QT200. These things test mixed mode circuit boards concentrating on
the Digital ICs and Analog ICs and a few other things. Does anyone
have any experience with these machines? Good or bad news about them.
The ABI unit seems like it might be very helpful in repair of circuit
boards. I mainly need to service Arcade Game boards. It uses 5
methods to test the chips. 1. Automatic IC identifier.
2. Checking for shorts between any of the pins. 3. Back drives the chip
and applies a truth table test to known chips. 4. Compares V-I to
patterns stored or to known working boards. 5. Tests for temperature
difference between known working chips. I think there is a few other
things in there that it does. I have been looking at them for quite a
while since they cost between $15,000-$25,000 each. They say you can
repair any board with or without a known working board using one of
these things. There is a Autocon test show in Anaheim,CA and I am
going to check out the Qmax. It is very hard to repair some of these
boards, especially since there are many custom chips with no data
sheets. These are a few other systems but almost all of them are in UK
or India or somewhere else and I can't seem to get enough info from
them. Is it true can these systems do what they claim? I really
appreciate feedback from people who are experienced with these systems
or something real similar.

Thanks
Russ
 
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