ENA is Published!
Foreword by one of our presidents and chapter 4 by our lab manager. PCB-RE: Real World Examples by Keng Tiong Ng now available on Amazon for purchase.
About ENA Electronics: Canada’s Leader in Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering electronics is our passion. For over 20 years ENA Electronics.has been helping customers minimize downtime and increase productivity by reverse engineering obsolete and unobtainable electronics. Our philosophy is to increase the longevity of a system through repair and re-engineering rather than to clone and sell a product. In this respect, we do not reverse engineer, clone or mass produce currently available commercial products. Not only is this process ethically wrong, there is little to gain while the potential for copyright and patent infringement is high, a risk we do not wish to undertake.
What we do however is re-engineer obsolete, unsupported, and legacy systems that is no longer available or the production data has been lost and a client needs the information again. We work in numerous industries, but one of the most interesting uses of reverse engineering is working around re-certification problems that can arise from the need for extra inventory of obsolete electronics. In many industries, especially nuclear, medical and the military, the cost of redesign and re-certification can be significant. Often, it is cheaper to re-engineer existing designs which the customer owns the intellectual property of, rather than to redesign and recertify the equipment.
About the Book:
Putting into practice what you’ve learned is perhaps the most challenging thing to do, especially if there is no practical and detailed example to take reference from. It’s with this in mind PCB-RE: Real-World Examples is written.This book completes the earlier works of the author, namely The Art of PCB Reverse Engineering and PCB-RE: Tools & Techniques, by providing the reader an in-depth walk-through on how theory is put into practice. Together they form the trilogy on the PCB-RE subject.While the first book provides a simple example using an ISA-bus SCSI host adapter to illustrate the steps in doing manual PCB-RE, it serves only as a starting point for those embarking on this adventurous journey. Along the way, questions and difficulties will abound, and one is left wondering if the manual approach is even possible, if at all practical to begin with.This book expands on the practical aspect of PCB-RE by tapping on the invaluable experiences of engineers in this field, supplemented with the author’s own example of a more complex board. Perhaps the contributions of like-minded engineers will afford budding enthusiasts a peek into the real-world workings of PCB-RE, so they can learn from the strategies and techniques described to develop their own methodologies. As far as the author’s example goes, the illustrations are done using Microsoft Visio but the process of solving the interconnectivity puzzle is generic. Prior familiarity with the steps mentioned in his first two books, though not a necessity, is advantageous to get up to speed and essential if the reader intends to use the same diagramming tool.Hopefully, this book will give the reader new perspectives and ideas that will enrich his or her PCB-RE experiences and inspire more engineers to take up this challenging yet rewarding practice that is gaining recognition and importance in the PCB repair and refurbish industry.
