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, January 4, 2023

The Passing of a Local Legend

It is with much sadness that Singapore say goodbye to her true-blue visionary and entrepreneur Sim Wong Hoo, the founder, chairman and CEO of Creative Technologies. The tech pioneer, who became Singapore’s youngest billionaire at the age of 45, was best known for the Sound Blaster sound cards, which dominated the personal computer audio market till the early 2000s.

In May 2006, Creative sued Apple, saying that the iPod and iPod Nano infringed on a patent that the company had for the interface in its Zen media player. Apple countersued. The legal dispute was eventually settled with US$100 million paid by Apple, granting them license to a patent for the hierarchical user interface used in Creative’s products.

In an interview with CNBC, Sim spoke about his belief that Apple had taken their ideas.

It was something we had to do because Apple did not just… infringe our patent. Actually, Steve [Jobs] came to our booth, saw our products and liked the product. He saw the future of Apple there.

But when Apple founder Steve Jobs died of complications due to pancreatic cancer in 2011, Sim, in a show of grace, took out a full page newspaper ad to pay tribute to him.


Mr Sim, like Steve Jobs, had left his mark in the PC industry and will be remembered by many with fond memories of the Creative products that shaped and changed the PC sound quality forever. Rest in peace.


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