does a reverse-engineering EDA tool exist?

I've gone through this a few times myself. There are a few approaches. One is to use a schematic tool like Kicad to place all the ICs first, then add the wires and rearrange things as you buzz out the connections. Another approach uses an intermediate step where you enter all the buzzed out connections into a spreadsheet, then go from the spreadsheet to the schematic. You can mark completed rows in the sheet so it's easier to keep track of your progress. What I've done in the past is to image both sides of a 2-layer board, pull it into GIMP, then trace out the traces and enter them into schematic. It won't work on >2 layer boards, although if a 4-layer board only uses the inner layers for power and ground planes, you can cheat a bit. For pads tied to power or ground, you can often shine a light from the back and look for the thermal "spokes" tying it to the plane. There is also a program called Sprint-Layout which I have not used but lets you place a reference photo underneath a board layout. One of the Amiga people have used it to reverse engineer the A3640 CPU board: http://wordpress.hertell.nu/?page_id=514 (I'd check out his page anyway because he also describes his spreadsheet method.) I have also heard (but not personally confirmed) that Diptrace lets you do that too. On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 2:51 PM Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: