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, October 27, 2018

Black or White

This post has nothing to do with the late Michael Jackson, or even Mike Binder. Rather, it's about a book on doing manual PCB-RE which is in the works, alongside the trilogy book which I'm also working and coordinating with a few contributors.

I've come up with two versions of the cover, one in black and one in white:


Would like to hear from my readers which of these two cover designs is better.

Some readers may ask, "What is the reason for this book? Why work on another when you're already working on the current book?" Inspiration is a funny thing, really. While writing my chapter in the trilogy book, an idea just popped up in my mind to write a bare-bone PCB-RE book for those who simply want the essential know-how of the manual approach, but with enough depth to help them take on real-life projects: a no-frills guide to doing PCB reverse engineering by hand.

In a way, it will supplement my first book, The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering for what it lacks of a complex board example, but which is still full of useful information in documenting the PCB-RE process using Microsoft Visio. However, the book will also be a complete guide in its own right as far as manual PCB-RE is concerned, and with a lower price tag that should appeal to more engineers interested to learn this covert art.

Judging from the progress so far, the trilogy will probably be available sometime in early 2019. But I hope to get this book out by end of 2018 or earlier, depending on how well the contributors to my trilogy are doing.

So keep a look out for more news on these two books...
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