The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Tools & Techniques: June 2018

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

Saturday, June 30, 2018

iRobot

Was at the Lifelong Learning Institute this afternoon for the SkillsFuture Festival 2018, a month-long event organized by SkillsFuture Singapore, aimed at inspiring citizens to develop a passion for learning and pursue skills mastery. There were plenty of activities going on there but what caught my eyes was this particular SG social robot at one of the booths:

Meet Edgar version 2, a robot with the ability to ad-lib, i.e. come up with his own responses to questions posed at him. Its maker, Dr Wong Choon Yue, is a research fellow at the Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Edgar is more than just a robot avatar; with his in-built sensors to detect human facial expressions and gestures, voice recognition and knowledge database, he is able to engage living people for autonomous and intelligent interactions.

What he lacks now is realistic facial feedback but it probably should not be long before he gets one in the next model. That's kind of exciting and scary at the same time!

Monday, June 4, 2018

0x90 - Riding the NOP sled since 1998

There was this guy who bought my first full-colored PCB-RE book and left a book review on his blog, with the name as title above. Here is a small snapshot:

Those interested to read the whole article, please click here.

After reading his review, I wrote him an email expressing my appreciation and informed him that I was in the works of coming out with a sequel that would address his concerns. That got him excited and wrote another post, New Book Cooking. You can read it here.

Recently, I was surprise to receive an email from him out of the blue. Evidently, he had bought my second book PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques, and was totally happy with the topics covered that he decided to write a good review on it.

Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed... ;)