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, May 9, 2026

Solutions to Obsolescence

My recent visit to ASTER has set me thinking about the problem of obsolescene, not just in the electronics industry but other sectors as well—commercial and military.

Granted, in my previous company I had taken on several jobs by the military to address their obsolescence concern, albeit on a smaller, customized scale, which included refurbishing and retrofitting their aging equipment. But ASTER has up the ante by doing remanufacturing—which is on an institutional scale.

It's not hard to see that there are three options to the obsolescence problem:

1. Refurbishing
2. Retrofitting
3. Remanufacturing

So which option is suitable? That depends on the kind of issue you have on hand. If it's just  low-cost cosmetic and basic functional restoration, then refurbishing is the way to go. If it's adding new features to an old platform, retrofitting would fit the bill. But if you want to return a high-value asset to like-new reliability with a full warranty, consider remanufacturing—but be prepared to fork out cash.

In other words, refurbishing is the light-weight solution, retrofitting provides strategic upgrades, while remanufacturing entails deep industrial processes.

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