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

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Hardware Virtualization

These days, virtual machines (VMs) are gaining popularity as legacy systems face obsolescence and the PC platform becomes more powerful. Hardware virtualization is an attempt to keep old software and OS running, albeit in a new and foreign system that emulates the hardware environment in which the binaries of the original systems operate. This is important, especially if the software is still required for a company or business to continue its day-to-day operation, when the legacy hardware no longer functions.

Some examples are VMware workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, Parallels Desktop for Mac, etc. With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft no longer supports its Virtual PC emulator and replaces that with the more sophisticated (and cumbersome) Hyper-V. Those wanting to emulate the DOS system and run old 16-bit DOS legacy programs, however, have the option of using DOSBox, a stable and popular implementation that runs well in the latest Windows OS. For others who wish to run earlier versions of Windows like 3.11, 2000 or XP, the best bet is Oracle's VM VirtualBox Manager. Heck, it can even run Sun's Solaris 10 and all flavors of Linux, for that matter!


On a lighter side, there are also emulators that allow die-hard fans of old gaming consoles like Atari, Nintendo and Sega to continue playing their all-time favorite games. One such emulator is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME):


Whether for work or play, virtual machines are here to stay. So it's time to get acquainted with them and who knows, you might just find new ventures and opportunities in the process...

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