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, November 15, 2018

Chapter 6

One of the contributors to my trilogy book, PCB-RE: Real-World Examples, has submitted his draft chapter for my vetting and review. I will keep his name and the rest of the contributors in confidence for now. Here is a two-page sample of what you can expect:


PCB-RE involves multi-disciplinary skills and a good deal of engineering experience. Besides the manual method of doing PCB reverse engineering which I'll showcase in my own chapter, there will be other techniques shared by different engineers in their own fields of expertise. Chapter 6 focuses on firmware hacking and you'll learn some very useful lessons as the author takes you step by step through the process, illustrated with many photos and screenshots.

To date, the trilogy has attained 240 pages. I expect it to hit the same number of pages as my other two books when the works of the other contributors come in and take their places.

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