Nick writes –
“Here’s an article, with plenty of pictures, describing the methods of uncapping various types of chip packages. Most of the methods shown are applicable to at-home use and require minimal equipment.” – Link.
8 thoughts on “HOW TO – Uncap/open various integrated circuits”
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Well that’s fine and dandy, but what do you do with an IC once its open? Look at it…?
Yeah look at it. With a microscope if you’ve got one, or make it into jewellery.
Remember: If you can’t open it – you don’t own it.
“Remember: If you can’t open it – you don’t own it.”
Do you own your body? Prove it :)
samurai1200: If the IC is planar, you can try to reverse engineer the logic gates or look for easter eggs (see the first link in my article). The layout that you see is the work of hundreds of hours of work at least. This means that every bit of detail there is present for a reason. It is true that you can’t tell the difference between nmos and pmos (pnp or npn bjt) but you can make educated guesses, so that is where part of the fun is. I have put together a high resolution map of the analog devices AMP03 here. Hope you enjoy.