- How to reverse engineer an analog chip: the TDA7000 FM radio receiver (righto.com)
Have you ever wanted to reverse engineer an analog chip from a die photo? Wanted to understand what’s inside the “black box” of an integrated circuit? In this article, I explain my reverse engineering process, using the Philips TDA7000 FM radio receiver chip as an example. This chip was the first FM radio receiver on a chip.1 It was designed in 1977—an era of large transistors and a single layer of metal—so it is much easier to examine than modern chips. Nonetheless, the TDA7000 is a non-trivial chip with over 100 transistors. It includes common analog circuits such as differential amplifiers and current mirrors, along with more obscure circuits such as Gilbert cell mixers.
- Philip K. Dick (Wikipedia)
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.