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

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

No CAN Do!

I have a friend who gets exasperated whenever someone talks to him in American slang. One of the issues he had was figuring out if the other party is in the affirmative or not whenever he asked, "Can you do this for me?" There's a subtle nuance that differentiates between "I can" and "I can't" that's hard for him to detect due to his hearing, he'd follow with another question, "So can you, or can you not?" just to be sure.

Given a choice, I suspect my friend would prefer a "No can do" over "I can't" for a reply. I think the phrasing is meant to imply simplified English, as if speaking to a non-native speaker. The proper usage should be "No, can't do" but people just got lazy and omit the 't' sound altogether. Then again, the other party may be implying, "It might be possible, but I'm not willing to try." So it's anybody's guess. 

Thankfully, the CAN bus has its own way of arbitration for devices sharing just two common data lines:


After so many years, I wonder if that friend has gotten over this matter. Should I bump into him one day, I may just suggest to him to read up the CAN protocol and see if that helps.

CAN do? You betcha!
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