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, February 7, 2022

Universal Serial Bus

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is perhaps one of the most versatile and common serial bus protocol ever to be implemented in modern digital technology, from computers to storage devices and mobile gadgets that we hold in our hands. But what makes them so popular and universally adopted compared to the other types of serial buses?

The answer lies in one of the greatest features of the USB—hot swapping. This feature allows a device to be removed or replaced without the past prerequisite of rebooting and interrupting the system. Older ports required a PC to be restarted when adding or removing a new device. Hot swapping is fault-tolerant—the ability to continue operating despite a hardware failure. That said, when hot-swapping certain devices such as a camera, damage can occur to the port, camera or other devices if a single pin is accidentally shorted.

Since its inception, the USB has undergone several revisions, not only to improve on the speed of data transfer rates, but also to adapt to smaller designs and the multi-functional requirements of today's powerful computing platforms.

So while SPI, I2C, CAN and the RS family of serial buses have their own specialized usage in certain industrial and design applications, we can be sure that the USB will remain a top favorite when it comes to plug-and-play and on-the-go user experience for a long time to come.

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