sanding off chip markings?

[[email protected]]

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I then decided to take it apart, to see what neat stuff was inside.

The first thing I noticed was a chip (microcontroller?) that had
scratches on top. After a closer look, it looked like someone took a
Dremel-like tool to sand off the chip markings.

Sounds like a good idea, to make reverse engineering tougher, but is
this standard procedure?

Michael

 

[Ignoramus8339]

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I then decided to take it apart, to see what neat stuff was inside.

The first thing I noticed was a chip (microcontroller?) that had
scratches on top. After a closer look, it looked like someone took a
Dremel-like tool to sand off the chip markings.

Sounds like a good idea, to make reverse engineering tougher, but is
this standard procedure?

Apparently, yes:

http://digg.com/science/Professor_faked_chips_with_sandpaper_and_got_millions_in_investment

``A university professor used sandpaper to remove the logo markings
from Motorola mobile phone chips and passed them off as his own
invention. He got away with it for THREE YEARS and received millions
of dollars in government funding!''

 

[Joerg]

Hello Michael,

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I then decided to take it apart, to see what neat stuff was inside.

One of those little key-chain things? I tried one. Horrible RF
performance, can't hold a tune in a bucket. I doubt it's worth taking
apart (I didn't). Don't even know where I put it, not that I wanted to
go looking for it.

The first thing I noticed was a chip (microcontroller?) that had
scratches on top. After a closer look, it looked like someone took a
Dremel-like tool to sand off the chip markings.

Probably just a single-chip receiver. On mine it must have been a rather
lousy one. The five-transistor FM radio I built as a kid was better.

 

[Don Lancaster]

Apparently, yes:

http://digg.com/science/Professor_faked_chips_with_sandpaper_and_got_millions_in_investment

``A university professor used sandpaper to remove the logo markings
from Motorola mobile phone chips and passed them off as his own
invention. He got away with it for THREE YEARS and received millions
of dollars in government funding!''

A dental X-ray and some experience can eliminate a lot of this horseshit.


--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[Genome]

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I then decided to take it apart, to see what neat stuff was inside.

The first thing I noticed was a chip (microcontroller?) that had
scratches on top. After a closer look, it looked like someone took a
Dremel-like tool to sand off the chip markings.

Sounds like a good idea, to make reverse engineering tougher, but is
this standard procedure?

Michael

Not a problem....

All IC packaging moves to the place with lowest considerations about that
sort of enronmental stuff.

If they half inch a couple of mill off the end of the line we're still quids
in and you get a nice radio.

Cool

DNA

 

[[email protected]]

Hello Michael,



One of those little key-chain things? I tried one. Horrible RF
performance, can't hold a tune in a bucket. I doubt it's worth taking
apart (I didn't). Don't even know where I put it, not that I wanted to
go looking for it.



Probably just a single-chip receiver. On mine it must have been a rather
lousy one. The five-transistor FM radio I built as a kid was better.

Yup, this one was pretty lousy. Has a "scan" button that gets confused
sometimes and then doesn't scan anymore... at least, until you turn it
off and back on...

But still, for 99 cents, I wasn't expecting an iPod...

 

[Joerg]

Hello Michael,

Yup, this one was pretty lousy. Has a "scan" button that gets confused
sometimes and then doesn't scan anymore... at least, until you turn it
off and back on...

Mine was the same. Terrible. I wouldn't even want one of those for free.

But still, for 99 cents, I wasn't expecting an iPod...

I saw them in a grab box at one of the big stores. Still, $1 is too much
money for something that is essentially worthless and would just take up
space in some desk drawer ;-)

 

[Richard Henry]

Hello Michael,


Mine was the same. Terrible. I wouldn't even want one of those for free.



I saw them in a grab box at one of the big stores. Still, $1 is too much
money for something that is essentially worthless and would just take up
space in some desk drawer ;-)

An intersting economic metric would be mean-time-to-landfill.

 

[Joerg]

Hello Richard,

An intersting economic metric would be mean-time-to-landfill.

ROFL! That would be a cool new parameter for the post-RoHS era.

With stuff like this "radio" you couldn't really assess that time.
People buy these because the deals sounds so enticing. A buck for a
radio, wow. Then they'd fumble with it a bit, become frustrated, leave
it somewhere and the next day they wouldn't remember where.

I must confess that I almost fell for it, for the same reason Michael
did (to take it apart). Then my sister gave me one that she received as
a freebie. So I could keep my buck plus tax ;-)

 

[Richard Henry]

Hello Richard,


ROFL! That would be a cool new parameter for the post-RoHS era.

With stuff like this "radio" you couldn't really assess that time.
People buy these because the deals sounds so enticing. A buck for a
radio, wow. Then they'd fumble with it a bit, become frustrated, leave
it somewhere and the next day they wouldn't remember where.

I must confess that I almost fell for it, for the same reason Michael
did (to take it apart). Then my sister gave me one that she received as
a freebie. So I could keep my buck plus tax ;-)

I first thought about this when cleaning the kids-meal toys out of the back
of my car. I realized that many of them had been in the hands of the kids
for perhaps an hour or less before being discarded. The image I have for
the future is a large factory somewhere in the world whose production line
feeds directly into a landfill pit, eleiminating all the cost and delay of
worldwide shipment.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

I first thought about this when cleaning the kids-meal toys out of the back
of my car. I realized that many of them had been in the hands of the kids
for perhaps an hour or less before being discarded. The image I have for
the future is a large factory somewhere in the world whose production line
feeds directly into a landfill pit, eleiminating all the cost and delay of
worldwide shipment.

I combined two such items (an egg and the innards of a toy car with a
super-bright LED in it) to make an erie looking floating
battery-powered lamp. We sent it sailing out into the night fog over
Lake Ontario. Probably in the belly of a fish or lamprey now.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

I first thought about this when cleaning the kids-meal toys out of the back
of my car. I realized that many of them had been in the hands of the kids
for perhaps an hour or less before being discarded. The image I have for
the future is a large factory somewhere in the world whose production line
feeds directly into a landfill pit, eleiminating all the cost and delay of
worldwide shipment.

It works in real life too:

ENRON managed to refine that business model to the point of actually
producing nothing at all while transferring huge sums to management,
cronies and shareholders wise enough to ditch the stock.

One should consider the similar opportunities presented by CO2 quotas
.... the political system just created a new currency here.

 

[Mike Harrison]

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I then decided to take it apart, to see what neat stuff was inside.

The first thing I noticed was a chip (microcontroller?) that had
scratches on top. After a closer look, it looked like someone took a
Dremel-like tool to sand off the chip markings.

Sounds like a good idea, to make reverse engineering tougher, but is
this standard procedure?

Only by people that don't understand that it's a waste of time, as any reverse-engineer worth their
salt will be able to figure out what the chip is in typically a few minutes.

 

[Electromotive Guru]

devices like this are usually worth parts for the parts bin...If th
chip was snaded clean, just toss it and cannibalise the rest fo
parts, although finding out what chip it is can be made simple b
examining the pinout....

 

[Pooh Bear]

Only by people that don't understand that it's a waste of time, as any reverse-engineer worth their
salt will be able to figure out what the chip is in typically a few minutes.

I knew a couple of guys who refused to put the pin numbers of simple commodity ICs like op-amps and
comparators on their schematics. It used to drive me nuts. Their 'excuse' was that it made it harder to
copy. Unbelievable stupidity.

Graham

 

[Brian]

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an FM radio from the 99 cent store
(Made in China).

I knew a company that did this, sanding of all the chips in their boards.
Every regulator, op-amp, micro, everything. I thought it was just "cute
paranoia". Later on I learned that that they had copied all their
competitiors designs into their own. After that, I understood that they
weren't worried about being copied, but that they'd be caught COPYING.

However, it must be a good business model, they are still going to this day,
some time later, and growing. I guess having no development costs helps the
bottom line!

 

[[email protected]]

I knew a couple of guys who refused to put the pin numbers of simple commodity ICs like op-amps and
comparators on their schematics. It used to drive me nuts. Their 'excuse' was that it made it harder to
copy. Unbelievable stupidity.

Graham

"Used to" drive you nuts?

 

[[email protected]]

Hello Richard,


ROFL! That would be a cool new parameter for the post-RoHS era.

With stuff like this "radio" you couldn't really assess that time.
People buy these because the deals sounds so enticing. A buck for a
radio, wow. Then they'd fumble with it a bit, become frustrated, leave
it somewhere and the next day they wouldn't remember where.

I must confess that I almost fell for it, for the same reason Michael
did (to take it apart). Then my sister gave me one that she received as
a freebie. So I could keep my buck plus tax ;-)

Two additional reasons I bought it:

1. I thought it would be a lot lighter to carry on plane trips than my
CD-MP3 player. Only later did I remember that it might cause
interference with the aircraft navigation.

2. In case of a nuclear strike against us, or equivalent catastrophe,
having a radio like this might come in handy. (Better than nothing at
all.)

Michael

 

[Michael Black]

Only by people that don't understand that it's a waste of time, as any reverse-engineer worth their
salt will be able to figure out what the chip is in typically a few minutes.

If we're talking about those single IC FM radios that have two buttons
to tune it, a "scan" and a "reset" button, it was easy when I looked.

I bought one out of curiosity, and when I saw no ceramic filter inside,
it became clear that it was likely like the old tda7000 IC that converted
down to the tens of KHz range for active filtering to work, But the pin
count was wrong. I checked the Signetics website, and they pointed
to variants of the original IC, and one of them matched the pin count
and then I traced the circuit based on the assumption it was that
IC, and there it was. I've posted about it, I can't recall the IC
but it was something like "7088". In my case, the number hadn't been
sanded off, but it was certainly difficult to read (maybe had bee
only partially sanded, though it didn't look like it). Once I knew
the IC, and a I looked at it again with a good flashlight, the correct
number was legible.

Of course, it was easy since there was only one IC, and there are a limited
number of those that could do the job. The more ICs, the more work
tracing the circuit requires.

SOmeone suggested they were a source of parts. Unless you needed the
specific IC, there isn't much in them. I could get more parts out
of that older CD player I saw waiting for the garbage the other day
(I guess my parts collection is fairly full, because I didn't even
pull the transformer, but then I was carrying a boombox that I'd
picked up further down the street), or that TV set circuit board
I did bring home a few weeks ago (it was conveniently detached from
the tv set, so I just had to pick up the board).

Michael

 

[Joerg]

Hello Michael,

Two additional reasons I bought it:

1. I thought it would be a lot lighter to carry on plane trips than my
CD-MP3 player. Only later did I remember that it might cause
interference with the aircraft navigation.

That would most likely bring the goons out. I doubt these things would
be good in terms of EMI. Come to think of it, I don't even have an MP3
player. Now I am feeling old...

2. In case of a nuclear strike against us, or equivalent catastrophe,
having a radio like this might come in handy. (Better than nothing at
all.)

Mine almost would lose tune when one of our dogs sneezed. When walking
through the hallway here it wasn't able to play the same station from
one end to the other. Pathetic. I'd take a classy old 6-10 transistor AM
radio. Much better and runs for days on normal batteries, not some
boutique coin cells.