Macintosh Diagnostics and Hardware Tests.
For Macintosh starting with Macintosh Plus to Power Macintosh, with system software versions 6.0.7 to 8.6.
Automated diagnostics (from System 7.0 and greater).
Benchmark Checks (with range of CPU including Power Macintosh).
Include Emergency disks (800K & 1.4MB) bootable.
Apple Personal Diagnostics (APD) focuses on diagnostics for Mac hardware components. Given Apple’s obvious advantages in this field, APD should be a winner. However, in trying to make a hardware-diagnostic tool for the rest of us, Apple has come up short.
Apple starts off on the wrong foot by omitting two emergency start-up disks. If you need an 800K disk, or if you own a Centris or Quadra 610, 650, 660AV; Quadra 800 or 840AV; a Macintosh TV; or a Workgroup Server 60 or 80, you need to order a $10 disk — which is not mentioned on the box. And APD 1.0 isn’t compatible with the Power Macs, though version 1.1, shipping soon, will be. APD consists of an application and an Automated Diagnostics extension.
The Diagnostic Tests window presents check boxes for five sets of tests: Logic Board, Hard Drive, Floppy Drive, System Software, and Display Patterns, each of which you can optionally loop. Alas, APD has no preferences feature; relaunching resets all options to their defaults. And those options are limited. You cannot isolate logic-board components or individual System Software tests, for example. (It’s worth noting, too, that Disk First Aid, included with the Mac system, provides the same functionality as APD’s System Software tests.)
If your Mac passes all APD’s tests successfully, a “Test Passed” message flashes on screen. But some tests are not thorough. For example, the floppy drive test accepts either an 800K or 1.44MB disk, rather than asking for both. Testing both encoding methods is essential to checking a SuperDrive. On one disk I used, APD locked out bad sectors during the verification test yet passed the drive without comment. Reinitializing the disk in the Finder yielded no media errors, but
APD repeatedly locked out sectors — without ever notifying me. APD should have suggested that I retest with another floppy disk to see if the error was due to a bad disk or a problem with the drive or my software. In this case, the problem was not a bad disk, so it could have been a dirty or malfunctioning drive — exactly what APD is supposed to find.
The System Info and Benchmark Checks features aren’t the primary focus of APD, but even so, superior software alternatives are available as freeware and shareware. System Info — which tells you what Mac you have, how much RAM is installed, the version numbers of parts of the installed System software, information on installed extensions and applications, and a few details about SCSI devices — is useful but limited and inflexible. For example. Control Panels and Extensions Info gives the names and versions of installed extensions but not info on RAMa usage, size of disk, traps patched, load order, disabled extensions, and so on. APD’s SCSI and slot information is similarly skimpy; for example, the slot info covers NuBus but not the PDS.
There are three math tests (integer, complex, and FPU); two speed tests (memory and CPU); one video test (which does not cycle through all bit depths); and a quick, generic read/write hard drive test that’s too short to provide any reliable data and cannot be set to run multiple iterations and obtain an average. Without more control and detail, plus the ability to save, annotate, import, and export records, APD’s benchmark checks aren’t useful or meaningful.
The Automated Diagnostics extension (which requires System 7) performs a subset of the diagnostic tests during idle time. You configure Automatic Diagnostics from within the application; a control panel would have been a more convenient way to enable or disable the extension (you can’t choose individual tests), set the idle-time threshold, and choose the way it notifies you that testing is active. Last, a status field reports when tests were last run and whether the system passed or failed. Vexingly, APD clears that field any time you restart your Mac or run tests within the application.
To get specifics on problems that APD detects, you must create a report. Reports are highly configurable, but they’re in a proprietary file format and can’t be exported to text or pasted into another program. The Help window presents cursory, context-sensitive descriptions of control items. All the documentation is in the slim manual.
More significantly, the manual is uneven. The troubleshooting chapter gives explanations and responses for all APD error messages, but inexplicably recommends rebuilding the Desktop if the logic-board or RAM tests fail. An excellent section on SCSI termination and troubleshooting is preceded by references to drives being removed after launching the program, as if detaching SCSI devices with the Mac turned on were acceptable. While the manual suggests using third-party utilities for repairing directory damage, when it addresses lost folders and files it makes no mention of data-recovery utilities or services; instead, it suggests that you back up what you can and reformat. It has tables on RAM, VRAM, and card slot upgrades, but no tables of sad-Mac or system error codes.
The Last Word
The real question is. Do you need this type of program at all? For most users the answer is no. Most computer problems aren’t due to hardware component failure, and those that are generally (1) are obvious enough to diagnose without software, (2) are severe enough to prevent you from running diagnostic software, or (3) involve hardware not checked adequately or at all by APD. The Mac already runs a thorough self-diagnostic test at every start-up and checks most of the things that APD checks — that’s what the happy-Mac symbol means.
If Apple had provided a solid, versatile utility with an elegant interface and extensive documentation. I’d have recommended it. Such a program could be useful for everyone from advanced users to consultants and system administrators. Sadly, APD is not such a program, and it’s just too pricey for the novelty of having your FPU checked in the background.
Stoller, Peter. (November 1994). Apple Personal Diagnostics. Macworld. (pg. 57).
Apple Personal Diagnostics
Apple Computer, Inc.
System
out of 10 (0 vote)
358 / 
2014-04-14 / 
2017-01-24 / 
e02c418ceda90ad5650a4a515cc145b8df9bad47 / 
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apple_personal_diagnostics_1.1.1.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
