Every PC Geek knows the drill. You are about to put your quad under water, when the phone rings.  It's your grandma, and she sounds worried.  Her e-machines from Wal-Mart crashes randomly, or worse, doesn't boot up at all.  While a great many geeks lament these moments, there are a sadistic few that relish them.  I am one such sadist.  Twenty minutes later, you show up at old granny's house, ready to rock.  At first glance, you would be indistinguishable from Rambo, preparing for an excursion into the jungle.  On closer inspection, the red headband would instead be the camping headlamp that you have never taken camping; the camouflage facepaint would instead be the residual smudges of thermal compound; the fully automatic machine gun is instead a soldering iron.  The premise is the same, however: survival depends on your preparedness.

All joking aside, a great many overclocking geeks have turned their hobby into a money-making venture, with many even opening their own shops.  However, before you can even think about getting started in the PC support business, you have to have the tools.  At the very least, you should have an arsenal of software diagnostics.  There are many that can be had for free, and easily integrated into a Linux live CD or BartPE disk.  Once you have a sufficient selection of software at your fingertips, the next step is a more expensive: hardware.  Diagnostic hardware may come in the form of Digital Multi Meters, extra CPUs, RAM and graphics cards, or even as crazy as an oscilloscope, however they all have one thing in common:  they aren't free.  So the question becomes a matter of which hardware will bring the best return on investment.

PC-Doctor hopes to make that question a little easier, by offering an all-in-one software and hardware solution with their new "Service Center 6".  The new Service Center hopes to be the ultimate PC Troubleshooting kit, by offering a complete array of PC diagnostic tools.  So, I, the resident ClubOC PC sadist, will take you down the rabbit hole and see if Service Center 6 is capable of making the PC Tech's job any easier. 

In The Beginning:

First off, let us take a look exactly what the kit entails.  The Service Center is comprised of parts hardware and parts software; some of the tools should be recognizable to all techs, while others may be new.  We will take the time and go into each of these in-depth.

From top to bottom and left to right, the Service Center includes: an attractive satchel bag to store the entire kit, a CD booklet with all the software, a PCI POST code reader, a USB Flash Drive, an RJ45 loopback device, the Multipurpose USB Device, a power supply tester, and finally, parallel, serial, gameport and audio loopback devices.  Before we go in-depth into each device, let's take a minute and let PC-Doctor, Inc. talk about their product:

Target Users:

• Retailers
• Enterprise PC service organizations
• PC repair centers
• Mobile PC technicians
• Low-volume PC manufacturers
• Low-volume warranty repair centers
• System designers
• Hobbyists

Key Benefits:

• Shorten your service delivery times — fast, accurate diagnostics reduce time to troubleshoot and repair systems
• Reduce your service delivery costs — accurate tests help reduce out-of-box-failure (OOBF) rates in manufacturing and no-trouble-found (NTF) rates for components in service organizations
• Eliminate guesswork — comprehensive testing with the same industry-standard diagnostics used by the world’s largest PC manufacturers quickly finds the real problem
• Intermittent problems and unbootable systems can be diagnosed accurately using the offline, bootable OS included on the CD and Multipurpose USB Device
• Deliver service into the field — the kit includes hardware test devices, test media, and software diagnostics in a compact satchel
• Increase customer satisfaction with your service — reporting features help you explain your troubleshooting conclusions to end-users and provide them with a record of the action taken

Key Features:

• More than 300 current, up-to-date diagnostics
• Hardware test devices — power supply tester, POST card, network tester, and loopbacks
• Bootable Multipurpose USB Device indicates test status
• Easy-to-use, intuitive graphical user interface
• Fast, 10-second start-up with no installation requirements
• Direct System Information™ architecture gathers information directly from devices
• Runs under Windows Vista, XP, Server 2003, 2000 and the included offline OS (contact sales@pc-doctor.com for legacy support of Windows 98/ME or NT)
• Multiple boot options:
  • Hard drive
  • CD
  • New Multipurpose USB Device
• Updated script editor to create custom test scripts for your specific systems or recurring problems
• Test results can be saved and printed

The Hardware:

The first hardware device that we are going to take a look at is the PCI POST reader.  What the POST reader essentially does is decode the POST sequence as it happens and reads it out on the two seven segment displays.  The POST reader also has multiple LEDS that detect voltages on the PCI bus and may help in troubleshooting why some devices are not working.  Many enthusiast motherboards have POST readers onboard, however, the majority do not.  Once you have the POST code that the system is hanging up on, you can go to the PC Doctor website and read the code against the codes provided by AMI, Award, Phoenix, and miscellaneous BIOS makers out there.  The POST codes exist at their main site, here.

For your convenience, there is another double seven segment display on the backside, to possibly make viewing easier.  To show how the POST code reader works, I included a video comparing the sequence to the onboard reader.

- VIEW VIDEO HERE -

As you can see, the POST reader is very easy to read, and even appears to more thoroughly reveal the POST sequence than the onboard reader does. 

Next is the PSU tester.  The PSU tester should be a standby in any tech's toolbox.  This particular tester uses LEDs to indicate whether the voltages are pass or fail.  While it is still superior to the testers that give no indication in regards to voltage, there are still yet better testers out there, for a fairly low price.  FrozenCPU sells this identical tester for $14.99, while the next model up has an easy to read display that actually reads out the voltages on practically all rails, for $27.99.  Of course, the best investment is a quality Digital Multi Meter. 

The next item is the Multipurpose USB Device.  While it appears to be just a USB Flash drive, it really is much more than that.  The key is what the Multipurpose device does.  This device essentially performs four functions:

• The device itself is a bootable USB drive with loads of low-level hardware diagnostics. 

• A pass/fail indicator that is represented by a sequence of LEDs for the low level diagnostics.  The LEDs are located at the end of the device.

• A test device to verify functionality of the USB ports.

• The key to allow the Windows based Service Center diagnostics to run.

Attached to the multipurpose USB device is a test sequence decoder card.  Also included is a manual which shows you how to install the flash drive (hint: it's the same as installing every other flash drive).

Here is a close look at the decoder.  As you can see, it is much more than a "Pass/Fail".  The sequence of three distinct LEDs in the device allow for the display of nine distinct testing states.

Also included is a standard USB Thumb Drive.  The drive is 128MB, much like those found in Happy Meals and laying on street corners these days.  The drive serves no other purpose other than act like a standard USB drive. 

The above devices all pretty much fit in the same category.  The top picture is the RJ45 loopback device, the bottom picture consists of the serial, parallel, gameport and audio loopback devices.  

Lastly, the ever important software.  The top disc is the software install disc, the bottom two discs are test media only, for the Optical portions of the test.