This paper describes the research work of analyzing vibration signal to monitor and diagnose on line the ball bearing fatique. Carrying out a large mumber of life test on ball bearing test machine, it is discovered that in the so called "second effect" vibration signal as the bearing fatique occurs, apart from the two widely used spetrum charactersof "fraverse frequency" and "high frequency shock pulse" , there is another important but rarely known opcctrum characteristic of high frequency peaks existing in the middle-to-high frequency band.The generating mechanism, effect factors and test method of those high frequency peaks are researched tentativ tentatively. Two binds of device for monitoring abnd diagnos sing ball learing fatique on line are developed based ion this new type spectrum characteristic. One consists of a bandpass filter, the other is based on the spetrum characters which corns from the DDS ( Dynamic Data System ) modeling