[ischmitz]

You can trigger the 6-pin by hand with the distributor or even with an AA battery but ideally you run the box over night at high RPM to ensure it'll not shut down when it gets hot. When I test boxes some fail only after 6h - 8h and you'd never catch that with a quick test. Alternatively you'd have to put the box into an oven heated to ~150 degF to simulate engine bay conditions.

That's why some sort of automated trigger (e.g. signal generator or your drill connected to the distributor) is preferred.