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

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

What's in a Label?

Most commercial ICs are labelled with their common part numbers in full on top of their packaging, so it's not too difficult to identify them at first glance. Military parts are a bit more tricky because most of the time they are designated with the 16-digit NSN references beginning with '5962'. This requires additional step of cross referencing to make out what they are.

In the case of NVidia's graphics processing unit (GPU) which is the highlight of my latest PCB-RE related book, I have deciphered the top plate label on this 820-pin monolithic IC:


Bet most readers didn't realize that there is so much information present on this piece of real estate. After all, it's meant for designers and manufacturers and not the casual users of the end product. Of course, you can expect to find even more interesting and valuable information in my upcoming book, which should debut sometime in late March this year.

The good news is it will be priced very affordably so every keen apprentice of this coveted skillset can get a personal copy. Keep a look out for it!

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