An important advance in electronic test equipment was the incorporation of circuits that directly converted the analog signal to be measured into a digital reading. The most significant impact of these converters was to enable a computer interface to the equipment to be set up allowing direct computer monitoring and control of the instrument. Other equipments were designed with embedded computers, which provided very sophisticated analysis of the data within the instrument itself.

The complexity and sophistication of electronic components and subassemblies became more complicated. Multiple test instruments were integrated to form rack-and13 stack automatic test equipment, where the individual instruments were connected to a control computer by a common bus. These computer-controlled testers were very efficient at providing the input stimulus to the unit under test and monitoring the output response.

The ability of automatic test equipment to sort out good from bad units is only the first requirement of modern production test equipment. Since the repair of defective units can be costly, the design and program development of test equipment frequently must include special provisions to provide failure-mode analysis. Information such as the probable defective component on a printed circuit board or the probable defective board in a system is of great value in efficient repair. Some test systems include fault dictionaries, supplemental tests after first failure, or even artificial intelligence features to assist in repair.

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