Instrumentation: New philosophies for portable digital instruments: Signature analysis and circuit emulation are exploited in new test equipment to reduce runaway service costs

Paced by a maturing integrated-circuits technology, the costs of data-processing products have been declining steadily, which should be a bright note in the lives of computer and terminal-equipment manufacturers. But there is another, darker side to the coin — the rising cost of service and maintenance as the equipment increases in complexity and sophistication. And the problem is compounded by a lack of skilled service personnel, and by a spreading nontechnical data-processing customer base (banks, brokerage houses, retail outlets) that demands minimum equipment downtimes.