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, March 8, 2019

Trilogy Controversy (Part 2)

Sometime in October 2016, I came across a blog that featured a reader's personal review of The Art of PCB-RE, which in my opinion was well-written and fairly objective. On the good side, this is what he wrote:
The book guides you throughout the whole process (of PCB-RE) ranging from all necessary preparations, documentation, tools needed to the final document visualizing the PCB. 
One could argue that it is more a book on Visio than a book on reversing PCBs. It is! But this may perhaps also be one of its strengths as it describes the importance of documentation of the process. I personally find it a good feature being a friend of thorough and easy to read documentation and all. I was thus quite positively surprised to find the extensive documentation used throughout the reversing processing. Many underestimate the importance of documentation, which ironically is one of the reason why this book was written in the first place.
Of course, he did lament the lack of other PCB-RE techniques which would be nice to include in the book (I did mention a little here and there, but The Art of PCB-RE is primarily focused on the manual approach with the average engineers in mind who do not have access to expensive or exotic equipment):
Throughout the book I could however not get rid of the feeling that I wanted more on the PCB reversing techniques... As the author is trying to revive/repair old or undocumented hardware, his process is quite non-destructive. I would like to see some other tricks discussed like for example delayering a PCB, a subject that Joe Grand, a dedicated hardware hacker at Grand Idea Studio writes about in a few great presentations and papers. 
It would also be nice to see more advanced topics like chip-off techniques as this in many cases is a very necessary process in order to be able to both document and interact with parts of the PCB or its components. This is especially true when it comes to BGA – Ball Grid Array components. There is a bunch of cheap and easy to use tools available for this purpose. 
Perhaps way out of scope and a bit too advanced as it may be out of reach for many, it would be nice to mention methods like computer tomography 3D scanning or fluoroscopic techniques available which may be available at university campuses for example.
Well, I heard him loud and clear. Be careful what you wish for! So after some deliberation, I started researching various industry PCB-RE practices and papers. However, real detailed information was rare, if much, to be found online. And though I came from a test engineering background and worked on quite a number of high-end test platforms, to undertake the task of writing a sequel book that covers these PCB-RE methodologies and equipment was way over my head. The more feasible way is to invite experienced engineers to contribute their knowledge in the fields of their expertise.

Since he mentioned the big name of Joe Grand, I decided to take a gamble and write to the kingpin as a first attempt. Guess what? He replied! I simply couldn't believe it... Not only did Joe gave me his permission to reproduce his work, he even vetted and edited the draft and inserted additional stuff to make it more up to date. To top it off, when I asked Joe for a photo to put it in the author bio section of the chapter, this was what he provided:


Was I flattered and floored or what! Of course, there was no prize for guessing which of the two I selected for his bio (grin!). But wait... another big surprise was awaiting me as I pondered and sent out several other invitations...

(To be continued)

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)