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, December 7, 2020

Bench Test Equipment



PCB-RE is not just about finding the connectivity of a circuit board to recreate its schematic diagram, though that is the primary focus. A lot goes into figuring out circuit topologies and functionalities to arrive at a logical deduction on how the components are related and used to achieve greater accuracy and reliability in the reversing process. Sometimes, it might even be necessary to go down to firmware level to see beyond the physical——into the world of logic programming and fuse mapping——when dealing with embedded designs and black boxes such as CPLDs and FPGAs. It might sound daunting but that's what separates the pros from the amateurs.

So while you only need a digital multimeter as a minimum  when doing manual PCB-RE, it is advantageous to have a few more bench test equipment on hand to help you gather useful data on the PCB you're working on. Three common pieces I can think of are:
  • Function generator 
  • Digital oscilloscope
  • Multi-channel logic analyzer
These benchtop equipment used to be quite expensive and those made by Agilent, LeCroy, Rohde & Schwarz still are. More recently, new players from China such as Rigol and Owon are making a strong presence in the market with their range of affordable benchtop products that are feature-rich and functionally comparable to the big names. 
 
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)