Patent ID: 7478298

Claim:
A test system for testing a backplane comprising: an adapter assembly; and a generic boundary-scan test unit; wherein the adapter assembly comprises: an application-specific mating connector to communicatively couple the adapter assembly to an application-specific port of a backplane; and an adapter generic connector; and wherein the generic boundary-scan test unit comprises: a test card generic connector to communicatively couple the generic boundary-scan test unit to the adapter generic connector of the adapter assembly; boundary-scan functionality to transmit at least one output test signal; wherein the test card generic connector is communicatively coupled to the adapter generic connector in order to test the backplane while the backplane operates at signaling speeds by: communicating the output test signal from the generic boundary-scan test unit to the application-specific mating connector for testing the backplane; and communicating at least one input test signal received from the backplane via the application-specific mating connector to the boundary-scan functionality of the generic boundary-scan test unit via the adapter generic connector of the adapter assembly and the test card generic connector for testing the backplane.