An environment for functional testing, peeking and poking memory, bus discovery and a powerful scripting because today’s embedded hardware design tools do not address the design test and verification process for prototype hardware, hardware engineers are forced to resort to in-house tools or application OS based testing, resulting in poor test coverage. This paper presents a new hardware test and verification process, based on a Verification and Test OS (VTOS™). VTOS is a user configurable test platform, requiring no porting and can be testing new prototype hardware in 30 minutes. VTOS provides an environment that includes functional tests, peeking and poking memory mapped locations, bus discovery and a powerful scripting language.