der Mouse wrote: With real docs (such as schematics) you don't _need_ to reverse-engineer. Reverse engineering, at least as I learned to use the term, refers to the process of deducing that kind of information der Mouse Real documents are wonderful but rarely available. In my field (hard drives) the schematic is useless. What we really need to understand is the manufacturing process, especially for heads and media. Those are "black magic" processes that defy instant analysis. Worse, they require enormously expensive test equipment and high skill levels. Decapping an IC and stripping off the layers is a major piece of engineering. Measuring the flying height of a GMR head flying closer to the media than the wavelength of visible light can take a small team of engineers and lots of money. And then there is the problem some of you have encountered: how to reverse engineer code when it is embedded with the processor in an IC package that has no external memory access? Reverse engineering to me is: to deduce enough information to duplicate the device, including manufacturing processes. Billy