# PFES-ENG-034 — Engineering Validation

**Status:** Authoritative discipline  
**Knowledge Cycle Stages:** Validate, Discover

## Purpose

Establish confidence that interpretations, capabilities, modifications, media, and emulator behavior reflect reality.

## Engineering Problem

Reverse engineering produces hypotheses; successful execution or tool agreement can still be wrong.

## Historical Engineering Evolution

Validation shifted from isolated success criteria to repeated comparison against real hardware, independent evidence, emulator traces, protocol behavior, and reference datasets.

## Engineering Discoveries

- Hardware defines reality.
- Confidence must remain proportional to evidence.
- Failed validation is knowledge.

## Architectural Decisions

- Preserve validation artifacts.
- Use multiple independent methods.
- Never institutionalize unvalidated claims as settled.

## Knowledge Produced

- Confidence
- Regression evidence
- Negative knowledge
- Behavioral comparisons

## Knowledge Consumed

- Hypotheses
- Firmware and media artifacts
- Hardware observations

## Current Engineering State

Current validation uses real drives, FriiDump, unlockdrive, emulator comparison, Windows/iSCSI tests, Redump, hashes, and firmware/hardware identity checks.

## Engineering Lessons

- Validation is a producer of new knowledge, not merely a final gate.

## Negative Knowledge

Project Frankenstein no longer assumes:

- Emulator agreement proves hardware behavior.
- A single successful run proves general correctness.

## Current Implementations

- Hardware fleet
- FriiDump
- unlockdrive
- MN103S emulator
- Manual engineering review

## Future Implementations

- Automated regression suites
- Confidence propagation
- Continuous validation

## Open Questions

To be expanded during engineering review.

## Why This Chapter Exists

PFES must not become a mechanism for preserving confident mistakes.
