BusTrace is a full-featured software bus analyzer that allows you to capture and analyze I/O activity that occurs between your computer and many types of peripheral devices.

What type of devices does BusTrace capture I/O activity on?
BusTrace is designed to work with devices that process SCSI Request Blocks (SRBs) / Command Descriptor Blocks (CDBs).  These are typically disk drives, CD/DVD drives, tape drives, many scanners, and much more.  Although "SCSI" appears in the term SCSI Request Blocks, you may wonder if we support only SCSI devices.  This is not the case.  BusTrace supports devices on the following bus architectures:

• IDE/ATA/ATAPI
• SCSI
• USB
• 1394

If your bus architecture is not listed above, we may still support the device as some bus architectures "mimic" a SCSI bus to the operating system.  Before purchasing BusTrace, we encourage you to download the BusTrace demo.  This demo will show you which devices BusTrace is able to capture I/O activity on.

What operating systems are supported?
We support Windows 98/98SE/Millennium, as well as Windows 2000/XP.

Who can benefit from using BusTrace?
Although BusTrace is meant for advanced users, it has been designed with ease-of-use in mind.  Even a novice user can quickly capture bus activity in just two steps.  The real skill in using BusTrace comes in analyzing the captured I/Os.  For that, it is recommended that you have a base knowledge of Command Descriptor Blocks (CDB) and sense data (error codes returned from a device).  We also recommend that you have the command specifications for your device of interest.

Having said all that, even if you have no idea what a CDB is, or what sense data means, BusTrace is still useful if you wanted to do items such as I/O performance analysis.  Download the demo and give it a shot.

Here are just a few examples of who can benefit from using this software:

• Software Engineers.  Are you developing a driver or application that communicates with an I/O peripheral that processes CDBs?  Do you need a bus analyzer to capture and process I/O activity?  If so, BusTrace is for you!  You can quickly analyze I/O activity being sent to your device, detect if the OS (or other s/w) is interfering with your I/O activity, and much, much more.
• Hardware/Firmware Engineers.  If somebody is reporting that a specific application is failing with your device, simply run BusTrace and quickly detect which I/Os the software is sending you, and in what order.
• Applications Engineers.  Do you support OEMs that purchase your company's software?  BusTrace is an invaluable tool to help you assist your customers, and to provide more detailed error analysis to the development organization.
• Test Engineers.  Are you responsible for the quality of your company's software or peripheral device?  You can use BusTrace to provide detailed error analysis along with a bug submission.  You can watch for invalid CDBs being sent to a device; these could be the sign of a larger problems down the road if the software expects that command to work.  You can do a performance analysis and see if the I/O bus is being used more than it should be.
• Technical Support Engineers.  What do you do if a customer calls to report a problem with your software against a specific device?  If you have access to that device, you can quickly install BusTrace and determine where the software is failing.  By comparing the I/O activity against a working device, you can determine who is at fault.  If the problem is not be your company's issue, BusTrace can serve as an invaluable tool to show the other company that they are doing something against spec.
• Advanced PC End Users.  Anyone who is an advanced user, and wants to know more about what is going on within their system, can benefit from BusTrace.  While you may not be able to fully understand all the specifics about processing CDBs and sense data, you will still be able to learn a lot about from running BusTrace.  Download our demo today!

What information is captured for each I/O?
BusTrace captures as much information as it can about each I/O to assist meet bus analysis needs.  See our I/O Information Captured page for detailed information on each captured field.

Can I exchange my capture data with others?
Absolutely!  If the other user owns BusTrace, you only need to send them your BusTrace capture file.  The person receiving the file will be able to view the results as you see them.

BusTrace also includes an option to export your capture data to a text file or to an HTML file.  In addition, you can copy individual I/Os to the clipboard (in text format) if you desire.  Note that these methods are not as effective as running an analysis from within BusTrace itself.

What is a trigger point?
BusTrace incorporates a circular buffer by default.  For the sake of discussion, let's say the buffer can hold ten I/Os.  As the eleventh I/O is captured, the first I/O is removed to make room for the current I/O.  This repeats indefinitely until the user cancels the capture process.  What if you're tracking down an I/O failure that occurs after thousands of I/Os have been generated?  Trying to catch that I/O in the capture buffer would be next to impossible without trigger points.

With trigger points, you can tell BusTrace how it should automatically stop the capture process when a trigger point is hit.  You can set trigger points on specific sense data, specific target status, specific CDB values, and more.  By default, BusTrace will fill the capture buffer and automatically halt when there are an equal number of I/O before and after the trigger point.  This gives you the best view of the failure as you can see what happens before it, and what the software does to recover from it afterwards.  If you prefer, you can configure BusTrace to show you all I/Os before the capture (including the trigger point), or all I/Os after the capture (including the trigger point).

It should be noted that you can configure BusTrace, if you prefer, to automatically stop the capture process when the capture buffer is full.

Anything else I should know about BusTrace?
BusTrace fully supports context menus.  Right click on a BusTrace screen object to see the available options.

CD/DVD Capabilities Utility Source Included
Writing software for Windows to send down your own custom CDBs can often be a difficult task for new developers.  To aid software developers, each purchase of BusTrace 2002 Professional will also come with the full source code to our CD/DVD Capabilities applet.