PhatCat / About

Engineers who hate
scrapping good boards.

PhatCat Technologies exists for one reason: every year, billions of dollars of perfectly functional hardware gets redesigned, requalified, or abandoned because one component on the board went end-of-life. We think that's a waste of engineering, capital, and time. So we build the bridge.

/ 01 — Our Story

Born out of a bad EOL notice.

The idea came from the wrong side of a PCN. A long-running industrial product — fully qualified, shipping hundreds of units a month — got hit with an end-of-life notice on its primary FPGA. The quote to redesign the board, requalify it for three regulatory regimes, and re-tool the enclosure came back at a number that exceeded a full year of product revenue.

The fix, in the end, was a small daughter board. A footprint-matched adapter hosting a modern PLD device, with level shifting and pin remapping handled onboard. The host PCB was never touched. Certifications carried forward. The product kept shipping. That one adapter saved roughly eighteen months of engineering work and cost less than a week of it.

We built PhatCat Technologies so that fix isn't a one-off favor from a friend with a soldering iron. It's a real engineering practice — with a catalog, a process, and a guarantee that your board keeps running long after the silicon vendors move on.

/ 02 — What We Believe

Four rules we actually follow.

PRINCIPLE / 01

Never touch a working board.

If your PCB is qualified, shipping, and certified, it is sacred. Our job is to adapt around it — not ask you to change it. Every design decision we make is evaluated against this constraint first.

PRINCIPLE / 02

Only authorized silicon.

The modern replacement part inside every PhatCat adapter is sourced through authorized distribution. No brokers, no gray market, no counterfeits. Full traceability and lot documentation on every unit.

PRINCIPLE / 03

Ship with data, not hope.

Every adapter leaves our bench with a conformance report: measured vs. original datasheet, across voltage, temperature, and timing. You get the numbers. You decide if it's close enough for your application.

PRINCIPLE / 04

Your IP is yours.

Schematics, firmware, reverse-engineered behavior — we treat everything as customer-owned. Mutual NDA on request before intake. We will never reuse your design, timing traces, or board layout on another client's job.

/ 03 — How We Work

A small shop with a real process.

We're intentionally a small, senior team. No handoffs to junior engineers, no offshored firmware, no project-management theater. The engineer you talk to on day one is the engineer who designs, tests, and stands behind the adapter on day sixty.

01 /
Senior engineering only.
Every project is led by an engineer with a decade or more of hardware design experience — analog, digital, or mixed-signal depending on the part.
02 /
Fixed-fee quoting.
We scope every job up front and commit to a fixed engineering fee. No hourly billing surprises, no scope-creep invoices. If we miss, that's on us.
03 /
Fab in the U.S.
Prototype and low-volume production runs through our partner fabs in the United States. Offshore scale-out is available for volume programs, with identical test and traceability.
04 /
Lifetime revision support.
When the modern silicon inside your adapter eventually goes EOL too, we revise the adapter — not your board. Your host PCB stays stable across multiple silicon generations.

/ 04 — Capabilities

What we're set up to do.

Packages Supported

DIP · SOIC

QFP, QFN, PLCC, BGA (down to 0.5mm pitch), SSOP, TSSOP, and legacy ceramic packages.

Voltage Domains

1.8 – 5.0V

Level shifting and regulation onboard. Mixed voltage domains per adapter supported as standard.

What You Receive

Finished Board

A qualified adapter board plus a pin-footprint drawing for PCB placement and assembly. Internal PCB design files remain PhatCat proprietary.

Production Volume

10 – 100K+

Prototype through production. Managed supply contracts available for ongoing volume programs.

/ 05 — The People

A small team, by design.

—

Founder & Chief Engineer

HARDWARE · FIRMWARE

Bio coming soon. Multi-decade career in embedded systems design for industrial, medical, and aerospace customers. Will lead every adapter design personally until we grow out of it.

—

Head of Applications

INTAKE · QUALIFICATION

Bio coming soon. First point of contact for new intakes. Scopes feasibility, runs conformance testing, and owns the relationship from quote through production.

—

Supply & Operations

SOURCING · FULFILLMENT

Bio coming soon. Handles component sourcing through authorized distribution, contract manufacturing relationships, and inventory management for managed-supply customers.

NOTE — Team profiles will be published as we onboard. Prospective clients under NDA can request CVs and reference customers as part of a qualified intake.

Have a chip that's about to die?

Send us the part number. We'll tell you what's possible, what it'll cost, and how long it'll take — usually within a week.

Start Intake →

Engineers who hatescrapping good boards.