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

Friday, February 27, 2026

When Theory Meets Practice (Part 1)


I'm not trying to be funny here; just stating a fact that many aspiring engineers have come to know when trying to apply what they've learned.

Even the transition from high school to tertiary education can be quite a shock for most people, let alone real working life. The first year wasn't exactly what I had envisioned after I was accepted into the Singapore Polytechnics, the very first of the country-state's multi-disciplinary institution. Instead of plunging straight into studying and doing electronics, we were subjected to a whole year's worth of theory on applied mathematics, basic electricity, mechanical science, and materials engineering. 

Of course, there were practicals but not what you would imagine: metalwork, woodwork, electrical control, arc and gas welding, lathe machining, and precision CNC milling. Interesting? Yeah... Tiring? Definitely.

On hindsight, we understood that engineering isn't just about electronics. Engineering is able making things—real things, physical things, things that exist in the world. Before we could call ourselves electronics engineers, we needed to understand what it meant to shape materials, to join them, to machine them to tolerance.


 

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