Abstract: Ground test instrumnent (hereinafter referred to as GTI) tests the function and performance of a payload data handling sytem, and is an important support equipment in the design of a satellite’s payload data handling sytem (hereinafter referred to as PHDS). Due to the great differences in the payloads’ hardware interfaces and software protocols among different satellites, versatility has always been a problem for the design of a ground test instrumnent for PHDS. A common GTI circuit board design based on configuration files is proposed for on-board products, especially PHDS. To solve the problem of the difference in physical layer interfaces, communication mechanisms among different PHDS’s the electrical interfaces of different tasks, methods of software configuration and hardware reconfiguration are adopted in the hardware design of common test board. In view of the difference in the formats of scientific data and data bus protocol in different tasks, the GTI’s software protocol and data format can be configurable by using the packet generation method based on sequence parsing and timeout reception method. Finally, the feasibility and versatility of the design of the common test board proposed in this paper are verified through the test.