SSDL Upgrades and Modernises Two Semiconductor Wafer Probe Stations

Our client owns and operates two TSK-ASM-90 wafer probers. They are used to probe 4, 5, 6 and 8” wafers, collect pass/fail data for each of the fabricated structures being probed, and are in fairly constant use.

We recently replaced the dual storage devices within both probers and have given our client the ability to make remote backups via their network.

Externally, the probers look identical. Internally, it was a different story. Each had a 1.6G Seagate SCSI hard disk drive. Both had floppy drives too, but one prober was fitted with a Teac FC-5 SCSI floppy drive whilst the other had an IDE 34-pin 3.5” floppy drive.

Our task was to upgrade all four drives with functionally compatible solid-state replacements to improve the reliability of the on-board storage systems. We were also tasked with upgrading all four drives to facilitate remote backup via the operator’s network. Restoration in the event of data or program would also be supported.

As part of our service, we first cloned the data on the existing HDDs so that the new drives would boot with the same data on board. Both SCSI HDDs and the IDE 34-pin floppy drive were emulated seamlessly from our extensive emulation library. As for the Teac FC-5 SCSI floppy drive, it was not in our library so was emulated onsite.

We then installed the drives, which we were all mechanically and electrically compatible with the outgoing drives, configured them and connected them to the operator’s network; thanks to Ethernet being an option on our CF2SCSI SCSIFlash drives.

Our final task was to put in place a procedure to back up (and if ever required, restore) the drives via the network. This was achieved using our Flash2GUI memory management tool.