A golden board is an assembly verified to work correctly that serves as a reference: test programs are developed and checked on it, suspect boards are measured against it, and parts are swapped between it and a failing unit to isolate faults. Fabricators can also learn a netlist from a golden board for electrical test, though comparing against design data is safer. Golden boards are labeled and guarded, because losing one stalls debugging.
Measure the rail ripple on the golden board first, then on the returns, so we know what good looks like.
Also heard as
- golden unit
- known-good board
- reference board
- golden sample
Related terms
Bring-up
Methodical first power-up and debugging of a new board, section by section, until everything works.
Bed of nails
Test fixture with an array of spring-loaded pins that touch every test point on a board at once.
Bone pile
Stack of failed or rejected boards waiting for diagnosis and repair, or for scrapping.