[sdiy-interim] Reverse engineering printed circuit boards

[Loscha]

For a while i was running two scanners - a clean and a dirty.

The dirty one was for scanning boards and such. A layer of food
cling-film was no match for the points of soldered wires and pointy IC
pins!

The clean one was for art/drawings and this curious area of my life
that isn't devoted to stuff that plugs into other stuff (scanning in
some of my Dark Crystal trading cards or whatever).

I know that for most people, I'm stating the obvious, but, even if for
one person, I will both typing this.... Having a scan of a PCB, and
doing some color adjustment is one of the best things ever. You can
"Paint" a trace and it will automagically follow where it goes and
joins up to. Rinse, repeat, do so with different colors. Work out a
set of colors that works well for you. In photoshop/gimp/ulead use
Layers to separate the ground and voltage traces, signal and control.

 It's a lot of fun.


-Loscha


On 3/26/07, Tony K <kalotony at videotron.ca> wrote:
> I appreciate your explanation Paul...no matter just curious, I'm not
> selling anything - nobody would buy my crap anyway hehe.
> I used to repair machines for friends and didn't have schematics so I
> traced the circuit and then created my own pcb design just to have in
> case I ever wanted to build it for my rig - it's just lately I'm
> getting fat and lazy and I thought "maybe I could skip this step and
> just scan the board of my friends machines which I'm pretty sure are
> all about 20 + years old now". Like a moron I sold alot of my babies
> in a moment of madness and find myself misssing them so I decided
> I'll clone some of them now.
>
> thanks to everybody that responded, I will try a copy center first
> before I invest in a 400 $ scanner and find out I wasted my money.
>
> Tony K
>
>
>
>
>
> At 02:41 AM 3/26/2007, Paul Perry wrote:
>
> >It's been discussed before, but the legal situation
> >appears to be:
> >Any previously existing circuit can be built legally,
> >provided no aspect of the circuit is protected by a
> >current patent (which lets anything a couple of decades
> >old off).
> >The physical arrangement - or at least the PCB - is a matter of
> >'design', which is covered by copyright, which (if I am correct)
> >lasts much longer than a patent.
> >
> >The most serious matter - and the likeliest to get a call from
> >a lawyer - is to sell a device under the name of some manufacturer,
> >or to make it look so much like the product of another manufacturer
> >that a potential customer might be confused. This last is what
> >Behringer appeared to attempt with their EH stompbox copies.
> >
> >The law informs us of our legal duties; our ethics (if any) of our
> >moral duties.
> >
> >Incidentally, I can't see any problem making anything from PCB
> >designs in old mags, since they were originally put there so that
> >readers could do so.
> >
> >paul perry Melbourne Australia
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Tony K" <
> > > Like old Radio Electronics pcb pages, it would be useful to use this
> >technique.
> > > Speaking of copyright, aren't all these clones of gear all over the
> > > place questionable ?
> > > How close is too close ? I was informed recently that d16 had to
> > > change the look of their 808 vsti cause Roland got nervous.I've seen
> > > their 909 and it is uncanny how close it looks and sounds !
> > > If I change the layout by say 5 % to accomondate a modern
> > > substitute  is it ok then ?
> >
> >
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>
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-- 
www.loscha.com

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