Holy crap... hardware reverse engineering is soooooooo over my head:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1813626064?bctid=1813637610

Methinks that is over the head of everyone.

You really have to be determined to do that.

Woodmann

holy crazy person o0
determined damn he's frigin "out of the box" insane.

regards BanMe

I wonder how long it takes to learn all that stuf... and it certainly doesn't look like a cheap hooby.

really cool stuff

it involves a lot of microelectronics and chip fabrication concepts

been sometime looking decapping process.

i thought the acid poisonous, is it? and that person did not wear any mask?

Not exactly poisonous, but nasty if you get it in your skin, drink it or inhale quite a bit of its vapors.
Also, he is doing all his work in a fume hood. There is negative pressure in that hood that sucks air from the room and keep any vapors away from the operator.

Couple more links about hardware reversing, very interesting read!

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2896.en.html

http://www.flylogic.net/blog/

interesting indeed. now it's soooooooo over my head and over my budget

i'm looking of what acid exactly used, but never read it anywhere

any? very fortunate i'm working at arcade where i can see those protected stuff every day.

Fuming nitric acid or sulfuric acid

http://www.siliconcert.com/decap.htm

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F6104%2F36043%2F01707865.pdf%3Farnumber%3D170 7865&authDecision=-203

this is probably one of the best works I seen on this subject

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-630.html

even if it dates back to 2004, it is still IMHO ideal for a powerful introduction to this argument.