To My Readers



If this is the first time you're visiting my blog, thank you. Whether you're interested or just curious to find out about PCB reverse engineering (PCB-RE), I hope you'll find something useful here.

This blog contains many snippets of the content in my books to provide a more detailed overall sampling for my would-be readers to be better informed before making the purchase. Of course, the book contains more photos and nice illustrations, as evidence from its cover page. Hopefully, this online trailer version will whet your appetite enough to want to get a copy for yourself.

Top Review

I started doing component level repair of electronics with (and without) schematics more than 40 years ago, which activity often involves reverse-engineering of printed circuit boards. Although over the years my technical interests have shifted into particle beam instrumentation, electron microscopy, and focused ion beam technology fields, till this day——and more often than not——PCB repairs have returned multiple multi-million-dollar accelerators, FIB, and SEM instruments back to operation, delivering great satisfaction and some profit.

Many of the methods described by Keng Tiong in great details are similar to the approaches I've developed, but some of the techniques are different, and as effective and useful as efficient and practical. Systematic approach and collection of useful information presented in his books are not only invaluable for a novice approaching PCB-level reverse engineering, but also very interesting reading and hands-on reference for professionals.

Focus on reverse engineering instead of original design provides unique perspective into workings of electronics, and in my opinion books by Keng Tiong (I've got all three of them) are must-read for anybody trying to develop good understanding of electronics——together with writings by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, Phil Hobbs, Jim Williams, Bob Pease, Howard Johnson and Martin Graham, Sam Goldwasser, and other world's top electronics experts.

Valery Ray
Particle Beam Systems Technologist

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Legal and Copyright Issues

Probably one question you have in mind when approaching the subject of PCB reverse engineering is copyright issues.

So to what extent is PCB reverse engineering legal, and under what circumstances is it a violation of the copyright law? Given the complexities of legal terms involved, there are simply no straight answers. Still, the fact is there are companies out there openly advertising and providing PCB reverse engineering services, as well as selling software tools that perform such tasks. To my personal understanding, such services exist for some of the following reasons:

1. The PCB is obsolete and no longer supported by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or in some cases, the OEM is out of business and supply of the PCB is unavailable in the market. In such instances, the only recourse then is to engage these companies to reverse engineer and reproduce the PCB in sufficient quantity to extend the useful life of the system.

2. The company or OEM that designed and produced the PCB lost their design files (whether by accident or through catastrophic causes) and are still under contractual obligation to support their product before its end-of-life (EOL) period.

3. Modification to the original PCB design is required for extended capabilities but due to nature of confidentiality, the OEM cannot be involved or have foreknowledge of such changes, in which case obtaining the OEM's design files will be out of the question.

For those interested to know more about copyright issues pertaining to this subject, a good article can be found in the paper written by David C. Musker in which he presented at "Protecting & Exploiting Intellectual Property in Electronics", IBC Conferences, on June 10, 1998.

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