Read the board
step 1 / 6A salvaged board documents itself, if you can read it. Work through two real boards, step by step: orient a chip, pull its part number, decode the date, map the silkscreen letters, tell a value code from a semiconductor code, and learn what an FCC filing will (and will not) tell you.
On the board
The lookup
Step 1
You can read the board now.
Orient the chip on its notch, pull the part number to feed a datasheet, read the date code as YYWW, map each silkscreen letter to its kind, tell a deterministic value code from a not-unique semiconductor code, and look up an FCC ID for the photos and manual, not for a schematic the maker was allowed to keep. That is a board reading itself to you.
Boards: a Winbond SPI-flash on a motherboard (photo T. Maier, CC BY-SA 3.0) and an Olimex board (photo And1mu, CC BY-SA 4.0). Conventions: IEEE 315 and common-practice designators, YYWW date codes, the SMD Codebook, and the FCC rules on what a filing must and need not contain.