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

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Economic Modeling


After all the technical assessments—voltage, protocols, inertia, safety—one question remains. 

"Does this retrofit make financial sense?" 

Engineers often treat economics as someone else's problem. That is a mistake. The engineer who can build a credible economic model is the engineer who gets projects approved. The reason is obvious: Economics is not the only driver for retrofits, but it is almost always the first question asked.

For that, we need the tools to answer the following questions with rigor: 

▪ How do we calculate simple payback and return on investment (ROI)? 

▪ How can we model energy savings (the most common retrofit driver)? 

▪ How to account for productivity gains, maintenance reductions, and avoided downtime? 

▪ How do we handle uncertainty and risk in economic models? 

▪ How can we navigate incentives, grants, and carbon accounting?

In the upcoming book: Solutions to Obsolescence, I will try to address these questions and more. 

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