Quote:
Originally Posted by astral highway
The manufacturers were really careful to design against cloning or self-maintenance and scrubbed out all the numbering/ lettering on every IC onboard! I've never seen anything like it!
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I have seen this sort of thing quite a lot. It was very popular in auto electronics. Mostly, if you draw out or look at the schematic its pretty easy to deduce the type of IC, usually logic gates , op amps etc, check first the power supply pins. Usually I have been able to figure out the IC from its application and the components around it, it actually makes for a fun challenge if you like that kind of thing.
The other trick was potting things in rock had resin, but over the years I have become good at slowly removing that. This is how I discovered the secret 4 legged device created by Lucas. But after their factory went defunct, some photos of un-potted pcb's with the exposed device on them were found in their filing system and documented by an Archivist.
Generally for devices with micro-controllers its rarer that type numbers are rubbed off because the manufacturers read protect the firmware and rely on that, although that can be hacked in some cases in the far east I have been told.