The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Tools & Techniques: February 2020

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, February 27, 2020

From Italy with Thanks!

A few days ago, I received the following email from a reader by the name Leandro Genovese who purchased my trilogy books:

I discovered only now that there are some other useful resources over the special books you wrote! I would like to receive this freebies and the bonuses, but yes, I'll attach in this email the proof of purchase. I want to add a special thanks for the help your material gave to me. It's very useful for a newbie like me and I'm very grateful.

Thanks Thanks Thanks!!!

Here's the proof of purchase he attached (a photo of the three PCB-RE books):

From his name and the foreign text in the email header, I gathered that he is from Italy. It's always nice to know that my works are greatly appreciated by readers around the world, especially those who are new and starting out on this exciting journey of PCB-RE.

I wish him all the best and thank him for the support through honest purchase, which is important for a full-time author like me.

As they would say in Italian: Grazie mille!

Thursday, February 13, 2020

A Reader's Bookshelf

Had been absent from Twitter for quite a while, so it came as a plesent surprise when I was browsing through the latest posts that I came across someone putting up a picture of his bookshelf in the works. Right in the middle shelf are two of my books! Can you see them?

This young engineer by the name of Jeremy Hong is no stranger to me. He bought all my books on PCB-RE and left glowing reviews for the first two. Not only that, he conducted talks on this niche subject at various hackers convention and meet-ups, and recommended my sequel book PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques in his presentations.

This was what he said about my books in an email:

So far I am really enjoying the books, they have been super informative and in some cases kind of mind-blowing, but I'm finally glad that I now have reference books dedicated to this subject.

You can google and find him with the search words 'Hong Electronics'.

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