Protection against copying of a circuit design

You are seriously deluded. :(

Toasters are more dangerous.. D from BC

I thought it was funny.. :) D from BC

Having looked at many industrial grade X rays of IC's, how is that going to help, especially only a dental X ray? You can see the bond wires and the lead frame with a reasonable X ray system, but little else inside the IC is visiable, certainly very little to tell you what the IC is.

Toasters are sold with lots of liability insurance for the manufacturer. Do you have millions to spend on liability insurance, every year?

Decap! I've used MEFAS to decap ICs. They will even photograph it for you. That will give a manufacture most of the time. If its a ROM and you have time to burn you can even read it. : )

Grant

Then how about let the customer sign a form that relieves the company of any and all liability..

Such as: In purchasing this item, you agree that you are responsible for any and all damaged or injury caused by this product..

It's kinda like with some IC's.. "..not responsible for malfunction if used for life support system."

Do gun companies get lots of liability in case somebody accidentally gets shot? D from BC

...also, epoxy packaged devices can be non-destructively opened with first an end-mill to make it thinat the die, then use of a hotplate and Red Fuming Nitric Acid with an occasional wash with dry acetone. Turns the epoxy to glop and the wash is to remove that; aluminum patterns on top and bonding are not touched (unless one over-does it). Net result is a device open to the world that is still inperfect working condition.

You would have to use enough powder for it to approach conductivity, and the thickness would have to exceed that of the original part by a goodly amount...

although I wonder how many among us can tell a 74HC4017 from a 74HC4040 with their clothes off?

Yup, no big deal.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Why even have the smoke? Just have a blade pushed by a strong spring. The lid over the PCB holds it in place. If the lid is lifted, is shears off most of the parts.

Why even have the smoke? Just have a blade pushed by a strong spring. The lid over the PCB holds it in place. If the lid is lifted, is shears off most of the parts.

Maybe apply some Haitian technology..

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

It probably wouldn't be that much harder than reading a schematic - all you'd have to do is be able to recognize certain circuit elements, like gates, counters, registers, and so on. On some of the chips I've seen, it's almost obvious which area is which, but that's on stuff like uPs, where, say, the register stack looks different from the CPU and I/O and so on.

Cheers! Rich

Or, just build stuff that's not worth the bother of copying. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

For a second, I thought you were going to say, "Shears off most of the fingers of the tamperer..." =:-O

I did hear a UL about some guy who soldered razor blades all around the edges of his after-market car stereo, so that if somebody tried to steal it, they wouldn't be able to carry it, or even pull it out of the dash.

Of course, the guy who told the story went on to say that one day, the razor-blade guy came back to his car and there was blood all over the carpet, but the radio was still there! ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Maybe he's a government contractor. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

This is one of the reasons why a product doesn't have to be perfect. Perfect product is attractive to copy. It just needs to be good enough. Imperfect product will get copied too but by the time the copies come out... you release an improved version and have marketing make all earlier versions seem uncool, outdated and old.

Example: Most software including Microsoft Windows. "Get version 6 because your pirated version 5 is sh!t"

Question is ..does copying fuel progress? The original designers keep coming out with new stuff so to top their own work + top the copy cats.. D from BC