The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Tools & Techniques: September 2017

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

Friday, September 29, 2017

Good News, Bad News

First the bad news:

My upcoming book, PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques, will be further delayed due to the non-committal attitude of the last contributor on the FPT and JTAG chapters. This is an unfortunate turn of event and I felt bad for the other contributors who have put in their time and effort, though it was not my fault entirely. In the end, I decided it is better that I write the chapters myself than to depend on someone who keeps playing the delaying game with me.

Like I put it in advance at the ending of the book:

I'm not a person who gloss over details on a subject or task I set my mind to learn or undertake, which is why contributors to the various chapters in this book can appreciate my editorial expectations on their works to ensure readers have the best overall reading experience.

And now the good news:

Bill Loving and Jeff Rupert of ScanCAD International, Inc. have been strong supporters for my book and in view of the delay, I have proposed a special ScanCAD edition to the book for their upcoming exhibitions:

They will be giving away free copies of this book and also my first engineering book The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering to existing and potential customers. So keep a lookout for ScanCAD's booth at these events:

SMTA Guadalajara 2017 - Guadalajara, Mexico - October 18-19, 2017 - USM Reps

Productronica 2017 - Munich, Germany - Nov 14-17,2017

DMC/DMSMS 2017 - Tampa FL, USA - Dec 4-7, 2017 - ScanCAD Booth 501

IPC/APEX 2018 - San Diego, CA, USA - February 27- March 01 ,2018 - ScanCAD Booth

That's all for now. Stay tune for more updates...

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Completed. Well, Not Quite...

I'm happy to announced that I have completed the last chapter of Section 1 of my book, comprising three chapters on the Fundamentals of PCB-RE.

Don't be misled by the simple outline and sub-headings of these chapters. They're jam-packed with lots of interesting information and illustrations. Chapter 3 is perhaps the largest chapter of the whole book (40 pages) but overall I am rather pleased with the structures of each individual chapter, having spent much time writing and drawing the illustrations (in Visio), as well as getting the relevant photos for the topics discussed, either directly from the original sources, or requested for permission to use. All these took time and effort to liaise and collate, not to mention processing and proportioning the images so they turn out great for publishing.

My part is done, but I will be going through the completed portions while I await the two chapters for Section 2 from the last contributor, which he promised will be ready by Wednesday. Let's hope he keep to the schedule...

Friday, September 1, 2017

Image to Gerber Conversion

Early this month I mentioned an image to Gerber conversion java program that can be an alternative for those who do not want to learn or use a PCB layout program. I was informed by the programmer a few days ago that there is a new version available at Sourceforge, so I went over and downloaded the package to give it a try.

There were a few improvements made, specifically the ones I suggested, namely the ability to save the selected colors and better contrast for the WhatsThisColor dialog box when the mouse moves over a darker color background. On top of that, the ability to select which of the four color artworks to replace is a nice feature too.

If you have not give it a test drive yet, go to the following link to download the program:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/imagetogerberconverter/

It's free but if you think it's useful to you, a small donation to the programmer is a nice gesture of appreciation for sure!

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