BASIC Stamps are one of the most well known microcontrollers out there. That popularity is well deserved and includes vast amounts of free documentation and example code as well as free technical support and support/discussion forums. Parallax takes great pride in manufacturing these microcontrollers here in the USA and every BASIC Stamp manufactured is fully tested before being sold. This procedure is done one BASIC Stamp at a time, usually in lots of 50. Over time Parallax has developed and improved the testing of BASIC Stamps. Originally there were separate programs and test boards for each BASIC Stamp model. The goal was to have one board and source code to handle all the testing.