Microscope

Thanks to Karsten Nohl presentation at Hacker Space Fest, there's an interesting DIY approach for reverse engineering.

Features

These are the features we're looking for:

500x magnification
2 MP to 8 MP camera
Objective table to move the chip slowly (i.e. not by hand, too much shaking and imprecision)
Reflected (incident) lighting

Feature we DON'T NEED:

Confocal microscope (it seems, because we'll abrase/grind away the upper layers anyway and the bottom layers are opaque anyway too)

Friend of Phil will lend a microscope with camera
- not perfect but should enable us to do the first etching/abrasive steps
Ebay? No perfect match yet.
Microscope.fr solution
- Different leads from microscope.fr website
- Euromex
  - Euromex XE.5627 Discussion Microscope (299 EUR)
  - Euromex AE.5175 Ball-beared mechanical stage (169 EUR)
  - either Euromex DC.3200 CMEX-3 DIGI CMOS Microscope camera (3 MP) (989 EUR) or Euromex DC.1300 CMEX-1 DIGI CMOS Microscope camera (1.3 MP) (469 EUR)
  - Total: from 937 EUR to 1457 EUR
- Bresser
  - Bresser Trino Researcher II 40-1000x Microscope (349 EUR)
  - Included mechanical stage
  - Bresser PC MicrOcular 3 MP (289 EUR)
  - Total: 638 EUR

Still selecting the right model.

Objective table: micro-screws controlled moving plate
Microscope: 640x optical Bresser (lent by Phil's friend).
Camera: 3.2 MP Canon Ixus V3
- Mounting: Attached directly to the eye-piece
- Drawback: produces round (not square) pictures (with no noticeable deformation) of smaller size/coverage than regular microscope-camera.
- Advantage: working and free