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

Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Chameleon

What has a chameleon got to go with PCB-RE? Observant readers will notice that a colorful chameleon is featured on the bottom right side of my fourth book, Manual PCB-RE: The Essentials:

The chameleon is an interesting species of the reptilian family. Besides its ability to change skin color to match the surrounding environment, it has a pair of pinhole–sized eyes that can pivot and focus independently, allowing it to observe two different objects simultaneously with a 360-degree arc of vision around its body. It also possesses a sticky long tongue over twice its body length that enables it to catch its prey at a distance with precision and speed.

Similarly, a PCB-RE engineer must possess the ability to adapt to different types of PCB technology, with eyes for expansive and miniscule details, as well as the resourcefulness to grow beyond present limits with each project undertaking. In other words——be like the Chameleon!

This fourth and final book on PCB-RE gives you all the essentials on how to master the manual method of PCB reverse engineering. Using a Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT as a teaching aid, readers are introduced to several technologies involved in the design of today's graphics card, from the PCI-e bus, PWM controller chips, RGB-DVI video interfaces, dual data rate (DDR2) memories, to Nvidia's  illusive G84 series GPU and proprietary SLI bus, as well as HDCP ROM and GPU BIOS Flash——all within one single book!

So if you want a fast-lane, no-frills introduction to these interesting topics (besides picking up one of the ultimate methodology I developed over 15 years of doing PCB-RE), then grab a copy of the book by clicking on the front cover above to order. Joe Grand's endorsement is your surest guarantee!

Posted by at
Labels: ,

2 comments:

  1. Biotech97October 5, 2021 at 8:00 AM

    I own all 4 of your books. By any chance have you ever thought about writing a book on IC Reverse Engineering ? Looking forward to a reply.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ng Keng TiongOctober 5, 2021 at 8:51 AM

    I do not have practical IC reverse engineering experience so it is not possible to even think about writing a book on this subject. However, in chapter 2 of PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques, I covered quite a fair bit on the equipment and methodologies which Dr. Sergei Skorobogatov, a Senior Research Associate in the Security Group at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in the UK, has graciously given permission to reproduce his works.

    Since you own all four PCB-RE books, I would appreciate you leaving a comment or review on Amazon, if you have not already done so. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)