I have to admit, not my most successful attempt at the “apply violence until the die is visible” method of decapping ever. The silver stuff to the right is the broken off silicon.
I have to admit, not my most successful attempt at the “apply violence until the die is visible” method of decapping ever. The silver stuff to the right is the broken off silicon.
It’s one I got from a lot we were throwing away at work. I don’t mind working with PIC microprocessors, but the 16C series is “One time programmable”. I tend to go through a lot more iterations than one, even for a simple program, so these chips aren’t useful for me.
I had the camera on my microscope set up for something else, and I thought it would be fun to take a snapshot for here.
I’ve used the “apply violence” + good zoom technique in the past to determine an IC was counterfeit. I made it before I got my microscope, so it doesn’t technically belong in this community :) Here’s the video I made though: https://diode.zone/w/9S5Qq4jLT6qezeK872sES5
Thanks for sharing that video! It is very interesting. I didn’t know that the actual chips inside the ICs were so small, and I am actually impressed that something with this complexity would be counterfeited. I do like to order cheap components from AliExpress, and I tend to assess quality by the external appearance. I never even thought about doubting the mounted ICs when ordering small PCB modules. It has only been a few months since I started playing with electronics, so this is a good lesson :-)