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

Monday, November 18, 2019

X-Men Reverse Apocalypse

One of the best things about writing the sequel book PCB-RE:Tools & Techniques was having the opportunity to know and interact with nice and interesting people. John McMaster was one of them. I got to know him while searching for X-ray related PCB-RE information, and came upon his Twitter page on a home-brew X-ray machine which he designed and built for his IC reverse engineering work. In fact, his amazing tool was featured in a number of websites like Makezine and Dangerous Prototypes.

John was kind enough to give permission for me to include this project in my book, and he even provided me with the necessary X-ray prints of his endeavors, as well as his fun bio photo:


Of course, I was more interested in the PCB-RE aspect than the IC-RE which is his main focus. Nonetheless, being the helpful guy that he is, my requests were granted:


John went so far as to fill me in with the details of his home-brewed project through our email correspondences, which readers who bought the book would have the pleasure of learning firsthand from the 'master', Mcmaster himself. (pun intended)

So if you have not gotten a copy yet, you may want to get it here.
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