wouldn't that be the node itself?
The more I thought about the tester the more correct this statement became.
So I took a 5" piece of 1/2 pvc pipe and two caps. In one cap I drilled a hole and mounted a spare node with some epoxy.
I took some of Ray's hookup wire and solered it to the node. Next I separated the blue wire off of the cable. The other end of the red
and green wires were connected to a std pc 5 pin molex connector (like they use to connect to the old pata drives.)
I took the free end of the blue wire data line) and soldered it to a pin which was inserted and glued into a small hole drilled in the other cap.
The red and green wire exit the pvc tube from a slot in the side of the pvc. the caps are placed on the pvc pipe and voila a tester is born.
To use it I simply plug the molex connector into the hub 12v connector and simply insert the pin probe into the data line of the string.
It is a simple way to probe the data line for signal. I use RJ's config utility as a source of data but could also just use a SSC with the test firmware.
It is not the end-all be-all of testers but I find it useful.