Copyright © 2012 - 2017 ABI Electronics Ltd
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II- Introduction
Congratulations on your decision to purchase the SENTRY Counterfeit IC Detector from ABI Electronics. ABI has over 29 years
experience in design and manufacture of electronic test equipment, and you can see the full range of ABI products by visiting
2.1 What is the SENTRY?
a) Operating principle
The SENTRY is a completely new type of integrated circuit and discrete component test instrument, designed to help verify the
integrity of electronic ICs by analysing their internal electrical characteristics and comparing them with a database of known
genuine ICs, or alternatively with a known genuine sample.
The basic principle of operation of the SENTRY Counterfeit IC Detector is comparison of test data from a known good, genuine
IC with data for a suspect IC.
The SENTRY contains a blank library of devices which you can expand by adding the devices you need to check. Any electronic
device can be added, provided there is a physical means of contacting the device available (for example, an IC socket). Each
device can have documents associated with it, such as photos of device markings, data sheets and other documents. This
further helps to confirm the integrity of a device.
b) Counterfeit ICs
Unfortunately, not all ICs on the market are genuine. The counterfeit IC industry world-wide is worth billions of dollars, and
many companies are suffering losses, delays and inconvenience because of the presence of counterfeit ICs on the market.
There are several ways the counterfeiters use to produce their fake goods :
Empty packages marked to resemble actual ICs
Cheap ICs remarked to resemble more expensive ICs
ICs with similar characteristics remarked to resemble more expensive ICs
ICs salvaged from circuit boards
It is getting more and more difficult to ensure that the components you purchase are genuine. The vast majority of dealers
world-wide are honest and genuine, but there are unfortunately some rogue dealers who will try to make money by attempting
to sell non-genuine components.
c) SENTRY hardware operation
The ABI SENTRY is an electronic Counterfeit IC Detector that works by scanning the IC to measure the electrical characteristics
of the pins (or a subset of pins). This data (called a
PinPrint
) is then compared with stored data to check the integrity of the
IC. The SENTRY contains all the hardware required to analyse the electrical characteristics of ICs with up to 256 pins.
The SENTRY uses a combination of electronic parameter settings (voltage, frequency, source resistance and waveform) to
generate the PinPrint for each pin of the IC being checked. These settings are stored together and referred to as a
Scan
Profile
. You can choose from an automatic setting, the built-in scan profiles or you can add your own for specialist
applications.
In order to connect to a device to perform the electronic scan, a physical
Socket Adapter
is required containing at least one
IC socket to accept the device. The Socket Adapter can contain multiple IC sockets if required, to allow testing several ICs at
the same time. As standard, the SENTRY is delivered with a built-in Socket Adapter containing four 48 pin dual in line (DIL)
zero insertion force (ZIF) sockets – these can be used directly for older DIL components but can also be used to accommodate
a variety of additional Socket Adapters for different package types. An expansion connector is also provided to allow custom
Socket Adapters with up to 256 pins to be attached.
A range of standard and customised Socket Adapters is available from ABI but you can construct your own, if you wish, for non-
standard applications.
