Advanced

The Advanced page holds every command of the tool, grouped by task. Each result comes as a card with the raw data behind a toggle. Each button has a ? with its meaning. High power needs two confirmations. This page is for engineers. A technician needs only Test a cable.

The Read tab on a real cable. Identity shows the plate values as a table.

The tabs

The table lists the six tabs.

Tab	What it holds
Read	Pins, Identity, Decode every page, Dump pages, Reset timing, Tristate. Nothing here changes the cable.
Control	Register read and write by page and offset. Release low power and hold for a time.
Run	PRBS both ways, Media link check, Trend, Loopback. Two units make a pair.
Query	Command block queries and the Firmware card. See Firmware update.
Derive	The cable database. A criteria file from the plugged cable.
Features	Every advertised feature of the cable, and a way to exercise each one.

The cable passport

On the Cable page, Read cable reads the identity, the applications and the advertised pages. It also reads the diagnostic features, the thresholds and the firmware information. Save passport writes it as a JSON file and a printable HTML page into the record folder. A passport is the full description of one cable end at one time.

Some cables advertise a feature and return a placeholder. Examples: the same power on every lane, a signal to noise ratio of 0 dB, an all-zero monitor page. The passport lists these under hollow features. A chart never plots an all-zero series.

Decode every page

Decode every page reads every page the cable advertises and shows each register with its name and meaning. The lane view comes first, then one block per page. Tick Save the decode record to keep it as a file. The same file renders the same way on the Records page.

High power

A cable starts in low power, under 1.5 W. High power is its working state. The unit gives at most 6 W. The software refuses to release a cable that declares more.

To release a cable on the Control tab:

1. Pick the unit and the hold time in seconds.
2. Tick I release LPMode on purpose.
3. Tick A 3 A charger is on PWR ONLY and the host on PC. PWR ONLY is the 5V 3A port.
4. Click Release LPMode and hold.

A budget above 6 W needs a reason in the Reason for a budget change box. The software writes the value and the reason into a record. The temperature watch of the guided test runs here too. Every end returns to low power when the job ends, with or without an error.

PRBS between two ends

PRBS is a known bit pattern. The cable generates it on one end and checks it on the other. BER is errors divided by bits.

1. Open the Run tab. The page names the pair. The unit with the lower serial is end A.
2. Click Swap A and B to change which end sends first.
3. Pick the seconds per direction and the pattern. prbs31q is the default.
4. Pick the application when the cable has more than one.
5. Tick Force on CMIS below 5.0 for a cable that reports CMIS 4.x.
6. Tick the two confirmations. Click PRBS both ways.

The live chart shows temperature and voltage. The result shows one card per direction with a lane table. Green is a BER below 1e-6. Amber is up to 2.4e-4, the ceiling a forward error correction still corrects. Red is above. Grey is a lane outside the mask.

Media link check brings the data path up on both ends and reports the linked lanes. Trend runs the pattern one way and samples every second. Loopback through B sends the pattern out of A and back through B. Both draw a strip under the chart with one cell per second. An amber cell marks a lane that lost lock in that second.

What a good run looks like

A trend record of an optical module pair over a multimode fibre. The BER falls from 1e-2 to 1e-9 in the first seconds and holds there. The band under the chart marks each second with a loss of lock.

A far-end loopback record. The pattern goes out, loops at the far end and comes back through both fibres. The BER is still falling at 60 s. Judge a loopback on a longer window.

Judge a BER after the warm-up. An optical module needs about a minute at high power before its numbers settle. The first window from a cold start reads three decades worse than the settled value.

Command block queries

The Query tab reads over the command block interface, CDB. Query status reads the engine state. Firmware info reads the banks and the versions. Firmware features and Module features list what the cable supports, with the command names grouped by family. Nothing here changes the cable.

The cable database

The software keeps one criteria file per cable part number in its criteria folder. The Derive tab shows the path of each file it writes. A criteria file holds the limits a cable must meet. They cover the identity, the timing, the low-power and high-power ranges and the pattern test. The guided test picks the file whose vendor and part number rules accept the cable.

A cable without a file can get one from its own advertisement:

1. Open the Derive tab. Pick the unit with the cable.
2. Fill in your name and a note.
3. Tick the two confirmations when the ready time should be measured too.
4. Click Derive from this cable.

The result shows the file path and its first lines. Every derived limit is marked proposed and names its source register. Engineering reviews the file and confirms it. A test against a proposed file ends with the note Criteria proposed, not confirmed.

To add a file that engineering has confirmed, copy it into the criteria folder. Restart aectest web. The next Read cable matches it.

The feature matrix

The Features tab lists every capability the cable advertises. Each row is in one of four states: works, hollow, not exercised, not advertised. Build the matrix reads the advertisement. Exercise on a row or a group runs the matching check and fills in the result. An exercise that needs high power carries the same two confirmations.

What can go wrong

The table lists the refusals on this page.

Symptom	What to do
Refused: confirmations	Tick both confirmation boxes before a high-power command.
Budget refused	The cable declares more than the budget. Raise it with a reason, or test a cable within the budget.
CMIS 4.0 < 5.0	Tick Force on CMIS below 5.0 for a CMIS 4.x cable.
not advertised or 13h/14h	The cable has no diagnostic pages. PRBS and loopback cannot run on it.
One unit on the host on the Run tab	A two-end run needs two units. Plug the second one and click Refresh units.
An all-zero SNR	The cable reports a placeholder. The chart says so. Not a defect of the unit.