In before copyright strike due to picture of ROM "showing the bits"

Everyone's house is going to smell like hot epoxy now.

I just tried this and it works. I can't believe how easy it is! I have tried decapping before using nitric acid and couldn't get it to work. Thank you very much!

This is an unbelievable revelation. The painstaking hours of hot acid digestion, sanding, etc. I've seen people go through...

When I was a kid my parents owned a telecommunications business. When equipment would become obsolete or could not be repaired my dad would sometimes give me the circuit boards. My mom would have killed me if I did this in the kitchen so I would go outside and use a heat gun to remove the epoxy package off the board. My personal experience is with the right technique with a propane torch you can remove a manufacturers die from the epoxy package. I successfully removed some of Intel's dies as well as Motorola, national semiconductor, Texas instruments, NEC, Hitachi, and many others. I also collected an extensive number of eprom I like the fact they had a window and you could see the die without removing the package. I like watching these videos they bring back a lot of memories.

Wife: "Why does it smell of burnt plastic in here?", "Why are there dribbles of metal on my nice hob?" =)

Little did the inventor of the vacuum tube know that the glass enclosure itself would be the basis of the transistor that later replaced it!

Long time ago I tried "decapping" by just hammering the chips, and see if I was able to get the die within, with very little success. For the little pieces I was able to get, I look under my microscope and wondered. This is more than genius, I can decap again!!!

Press X to pay respect to the PlayStation that donated its brains to this amazing demonstration!

I would have LOVED to see the main processor done in this way

I had to try it out even before the video was over. Went 2 out of three on some old Realtek audio chips. Awesome!

Another brilliant video. You never go wrong Marc. I can't thank you enough for all your hard work.

As many have said in the last video, it would be amazing if Antoine uploaded the pictures of the chips on the internet !

Thank you! I have been searching for a good way to do this for YEARS!

Beautiful!! Exact what I have been looking for for a long while

This is a cool process and the results are spectacular!

Interesting de-capping method. Good remark on the entrapped moisture in the chips. Didn't know that.

Amazing! The final zoom in views were reminiscent of Google Earth zooming into a city!

Great video! I watched/listened to it while... ...annotating a completely different microchip!

Awesome. I'm already taking photos of mysterious chips for which I can't find datasheets. I never thought just heat would be enough. I didn't have a heat gun so I put mine in a fan forced oven set on 260°C. It works a charm, putting them back in the oven a couple of times when they cool down too much.

One word, even being an electronics techy myself... Amazing! Thank you for sharing.

Thank you, its been maddening to find the solution to this problem!

That's so simple i had no idea, i thought everyone was using hot acid, very cool thank guys 👍

Normally fuming nitric acid is used... requires a fume hood, protective gear, safety squints etc. How you convert OTP chips to MTP!

That is fascinating! Its like looking in on a tiny, hidden world. Which if course, it is! I've seen close ups of ic internals in the past(many years ago, in electronics magazines, of the 90's).. they were nothing like the clarity here!

WOW! Excited for the next episode :D

The only issue I have with this method is that once the Die is exposed all the heat will cause it to start growing oxide layers. If you do this method too slowly you might get some optical alterations on the die because of this. Which could make your Reverse-engineering efforts a bit of a pain.

wow, I had no idea this could be so simple!

The ultimate "Don't turn it on! Take it apart!"

Funny, we used to reclaim ICs from boards by putting them on the hob, turned down low and with an IC extractor, then yank those suckers out. That was over 30 years ago and we were utterly destitute electronics students that hadn't turned to crime or paid work to get components from reputable suppliers 🤪 We noticed that if we held an IC in the burner, it would often crack and a simple twist would reveal the innards. Unfortuately, we didn't have access to a decent microscope at the time, so the best we could see was around 50x I think, I did crack open a Sinclair Spectrum ULA back in the day and had a look at, nothing interesting on it as far as I recall. I just wanted the Z80 and the RAM (sacrilege I know!) for a shoestring microcontroller build. The last IC die I looked at was a T805 Transputer (of INMOS fame) a ceramic package that I put into a board then hit sideways on with a sharp chisel, the cap popped off to reveal the glory inside 🙂

As always, very interesting!

It's amazing just how little of the package is actually the chip

This was awesome, love looking at the nano world

This is really neat! All of a sudden decapping has become something I can do!

This is beautiful!

These high resolution pictures of dies that Antoine makes, are they available online anywhere?

always amazes me the amount of engineering in these little packages that makes all the cool stuff work, yet are totally anonymous and ignored in the beauty of the design, just disposable items which would otherwise never been seen, who depts of engineers who would have worked on their designs, for some one of those tiny chips they worked on was the epoch of their careers.

Fascinating

cool, can't wait to do this

2:44 Looks like one of the chips has a premonition of what's about to happen. "Well, I'm out of here!" :-)

Very interesting and seemingly simple method! Does Antoine have a public access site to see his collection of die photographs?

Génial, vite la suite ! :-)

So you are Marc, the chef is Antoine and me? Marc-Antoine :D Great vid!

Well done

*magnific!*

You guys have the best lab

I just tried with a Zilog Z80180, coincidently using the exact same dessoldering gun as Marc’s. I was easily able to reach the die, but it was covered by a layer of packaging material that just wouldn’t come off. RIP Z80Z180…

Beautiful! 😍

Looking at those dies is like looking at a city from miles above... pretty cool stuff. BTW, how hot is the air coming out of that hot air desolderer?

I cant wait to try this :-)

Oh wow! That is cool

Wow, this method is way easier than using acid, might have to try it out.

fascinating

For anyone who likes decapsulation videos, may I suggest ElectronUpdate channel, where the guy gives a bit of a tour of what the different structures and patterns are likely to be - ROM, gate array, etc.

lol.... I guess I have been watching too many delid videos if I can spot a ROM as soon as I see a bare die. #electronupdate All the older lithography is easier to see too though... Always a cool video, thanks Marc!

Is there a way to reuse such a decapped chip by connecting wires to it directly? Or they don't work anymore after this procedure? I have an old motherboard from a vintage computer broken in half and the chip packages are cracked, but your video made me realize that the chips inside might still be intact, so if I could take them out from the plastic, maybe there's still a way to revive them somehow? :J

how have I not thought of this. This is so much better than using dangerous chemicals. Guess its time to finally make some cool jewelery out of some old chips

11:20 that sounds *magical!*

Cool, is there a way to get those hires photos of the dies? Would be a great poster :-D

Это на столько невероятно, что даже начинаешь сомневаться в том, что это создал человек )

Wow. I may have to try this.

He need his own channel! Very smart...

Nice video

Part of me was saying "No not a Playstation". On the other hand, if any one is allowed to decap it's you guys. Considering all the hardware you restore and curate. It's also not like there's shortage of Playstation ones .

Its like a whole universe in there, looks like a city from the future!

don´t worry, when you`re out your wife calls her girls to have a barbecue in your lab

It’s just like breaking a chocolate bar and it’s a very fancy looking gas stove. Antoine is a proper chef de cuisine.

Back a few decades we would use a revolving whewt stone in water in water to slowly grind away the casse. It was usefulk for multi-layers. The results were good enough for high power microscopes or electron scanning microscopes

I wonder if tile cutting nipper pliers would split the casing perfectly along the seam so the top pops off. They have 2 chisel type jaws that could cut precisely into the seam.

antoine is a hidden gem! i understand the man in the labcoat is hopping from one foot to the other?

Antoine - quickest die draw in the world. Not even autofocus can keep up 😊

What's the technique when you have a die with bond wires, BUT the die and bond wires were encased and covered in ceramic cement? Some of the Intel BGA chip (mid 90s) were like this, where the die was on the underside (but not a flip chip die). They would cover the die and bond wires over with black/brown ceramic. Is chemical the only option to dissolve the die away without ruining its top layers?

does antoine upload photos from this to anywhere?

I remember doing this a few times in my teen years, but I used a burner instead of a heat gun as I didn't have one back then. This generated tons of black toxic fumes, so I stopped doing it. I still have a drawer full of random chips that I wanted to decap. Somehow it never occurred to me that I can just use a heat gun!

1:35 spotted a real Chef ;-)

somewhere in a small sheet of note paper i have stored an ic from soviet elektronika wristwatch... it would be fun to know die of that, likely western-cloned-stolen-pirated ic, would look like i hope i still have it, i was only teen then, it was decades ago, someone's watch broke and i took it apart, eventually discarded everything but the die, which i'm not sure how i managed to decap then but it remained intact... i still don't have any microscope yet to look at it

Think I'll leave mine in the Packages. They're much easier to solder. You guys are saving the Gold Wires, eaaaa?

great trick, going to decap my chips now...

Please tell me what glue he uses for glueing the dies on the microscope slides.

Awesome! I will try this in my lab with BGA soldering air gun. However I missed the temperature you guys used, 400°?

0:52 : "No judge, I didn't realize that doing this in the kitchen would cause Marc's wife to kill him. It was totally unforeseeable." Also, I hope you dig around for a 555 die. Curious how small those are.

What do you do if the die has a metallization layer on it?

i don't have an hot air gun, just an hair dryer and a blow torch, but i'm curious if it would be possible to hook some needles on the dies and see if they still respond, of course big digital ones may be a bit out of hand

Does Antoine post is die shots somewhere on the internet? I would love to see them.

FWIW a friend of mine uses old-fashioned methylene chloride Nitromors paint stripper to dissolve the epoxy packaging. Not tried it myself however, so your mileage may vary 😅

Is it possible to decap Desfire Ev1 chip and read data?

"What have you been cooking?" No simple answer for that

Can somebody tell me the artist and name of the song of the music that plays at 11:20? The credit in the video description is for Kevin MacLeod's "Fire Prelude", but that isn't the song playing starting at 11:20. If someone can help me with this, I would appreciate it greatly. Thank you.

Watching the dies under the microscope makes me want to go play factorio

The close-ups look like pictures off of a future google earth......post borg invasion, of course :)

You are cooking microchips in the kitchen... Yes, your wife is a SAINT. Take her out for dinner, she deserves it.

Mark, What do I do if some of the Resin packages does not separate from the top of the die?

That seems a lot safer than when I was just sticking chips in a fire as a kid.

How does he get rid of the dust particles afterwards? Looked like there was some dust on the chip in the first microscope shot. Could not spot any dirt on the colour photos, though.

In an alternative universe Wolf would advertise the versatility of their stoves like this. The image of Gordon Ramsey and your wife giving a big thumbs-up to it would be surreal...

Wow, truly geek stuff. I wish I had a microscope some day...

Try this with Apple T2 chip ;)

I've done this to a few broken ICs to test a cheap microscope I bought. Just cracked them open with a wire cutter.

i've done this, fire works but if you take it too far, the die is discolored, still fully readable but clearly burnt :D

I put them on a firebrick and hit them with a propane torch till they glow red hot. The epoxy can be flaked off easily as a chunky ash residue. The die is usually unharmed and I get results similar to this technique. I wish I had a microscope that could actually get some good pics, though :(