Diagnostic system for a vehicle electrical system

A diagnostic system for a vehicle electrical system, comprising:

• a microcontroller having microcontroller core components, a first diagnostic handler application, and a microcontroller core component diagnostic safety application;
• the first diagnostic handler application sending a first index value to the microcontroller core component diagnostic safety application;
• the first index value being associated with a first microcontroller core component of the microcontroller core components;
• the microcontroller core component diagnostic safety application accessing a microcontroller core component diagnostic flag in a first table in a RAM if the first index value is equal to a valid index value in the first table, the microcontroller core component diagnostic flag having a first fault value if any of a plurality of diagnostic flags indicate a fault condition in the first microcontroller core component, the microcontroller core component diagnostic flag having a first non-fault value if all of the plurality of diagnostic flags indicate a non-fault condition in the first microcontroller core component;
• the first index value, the first fault value, and the first non-fault value each having a Hamming distance of at least eight from one another;
• and
• the microcontroller core component diagnostic safety application sending the microcontroller core component diagnostic flag to the first diagnostic handler application.