YavaCo PC Test Station

The MBTF (motherboard test facility) is simple enough. If you haven’t guessed what I will use this for… um… stop reading. Simplicity is executed again. Provided with the test station is an Insulated Neoprene Rubber Top Panel Cover and Support Block that allows you to place the mobo you are testing on top of the unit. With that said, testing the board is as simple as connecting the optical drive, floppy drive, power and reset buttons, etc.

If you can’t figure out what the problem is… and we have all been there, YavaCo provides us with a motherboard diagnostic test card to help us determine why a motherboard will not POST (Power On Self Test). When installed this card will provide you with a hex code you can reference in the provided manual to decipher its conclusions. This thing saves time, plain and simple. In addition to that, Check-It software is provided to help you figure out problems past POST. Coupled with loop back plugs to figure out problems with say, parallel ports, serial ports, etc. your work time/diagnosis time should be cut in half (Your customers will love that). If you aren’t familiar with Check-It you can visit Smith Micro for more information.

With our workbenches getting more cluttered, the test station is a welcomed addition. Being able to test peripherals quickly and easily is essential to giving our customers affordable service. The ability to test motherboards without hacking up systems or laying components out across these workbenches is not only safer it is quicker.

Add all this together, the Armor Card, the POST test card, the Check-IT software, the drive selector, and all the other goodies you get with this thing; you end up with one hell of a product. I am one who will always find things I don’t like about a product; with that said, almost everything I contacted YavaCo about, has been taken into consideration. This station has evolved greatly over the time I have had it in the shop, and I can assure you that YavaCo is not one of those companies that says, “This is my product, take it or leave it.”

There are only two things I can think of that are missing from this setup. One being an external HDD enclosure for rapid hot swapping of hdd’s on the PTF side, without powering down; for things like virus scanning / cleaning, and the other is a 2.5″ to 3.5″ converter for the ability of scanning notebook hdd’s.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention; YavaCo also took into consideration the absent minded… like me, and gave us a drawer to keep me from losing my loop back plugs, Check-IT disks, and my Diagnostics card. A great feature that will save me the time of rummaging through all my crap to find what I need.

This all boils down to a product that has definitely made its way onto my workbench and a product that I hold in high regards as a quality station. From my discussions with Richard (the founder) it is easy to see that his passion and attention to detail has made its way into the test station. Bottom line… would I buy one? Easily said, YES.