The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering: Tools & Techniques: September 2022

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

Saturday, September 24, 2022

Double Reviews

It's not often you receive a review from a buyer of your books, much less to have a double reviews from the same buyer in one day. So it came as a pleasant surprise when someone did just that for two of my books, PCB-RE: Real-World Examples and Manual PCB-RE: The Essentials:

For those wanting to know how PCB-RE works out in the real-world, go for the examples; for those looking to understand the process of doing manual reverse engineering a PCB, I recommend you settle for the essentials.

There simply is no better references on the PCB-RE subject out there than these two books. If you're into Microsoft Visio, then my first book, The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering is your best bet. But if you want to know what are the alternative resources available for doing PCB-RE besides the manual method, then PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques is the answer, hands down.

To find out more, click on the book covers on the right to Look Inside at the content page and samples for a better idea.

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Errata to Deciphering Schematics

As much as I tried to ensure that all my books are published to the best quality, sometimes a thing or two still managed to elude me. I just received the hardcopy of Deciphering Schematics after some delivery delays and found that the illustration for the Xminilab-B mechanical diagram is fainter than what was presented in electronic forms, both on my Word document as well as Amazon's book reviewer. Somehow you can never take for granted what you see onscreen is what you'll get on print. Granted, it's still visible but not ideal to a perfectionist like myself.

For readers who purchased the earlier version, I have included an errata of the affected page below which you can download, print and insert into (or paste over) your copy:

The latest edition has been corrected. My sincere apology for this oversight. An important lesson learned is that even for a vector graphic like Microsoft Visio, if it is shrunk to 50% of the original size, there's no guarantee that it will turn out right when printed. Instead, I need to export it out as a PNG format, then copy and paste before resizing it to ensure the appropriate visibility is achieved for hardcopy.

I would appreciate that readers inform me of any mistakes, typos, or quality issues so I can correct them or feedback to Amazon.

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