Folks, Please help me out here. I think everything is right as rain now, but I need help testing. I have several more additions in mind, particularly the 160-baud ability, but this should be a good stop-gap for folks. http://members.tripod.com/moatesenhe...mecm/index.htm Major revisions include: - Accurate data rendering and logging for 165 and 730 MAF & MAP systems - Menu-based capability with mouse enablement - Cool colors! - Editable/savable default section - TPS enhancements - 1/4-mile pass results storage in a nice log file - More logical data display - Architecture friendly for future improvements Please let me know how it works, I need the feedback. Also, my programming helper is in need of a MAF 1227165 ECM with 8192 (1987-89) for his vette. He's in Holland, so parts are kinda scarce for him over there. If anyone can help out, just let me know. -Craig

I'll check it tomorrow and give you some feedback.

James

I'll let you know how it works....after it works with my 160 baud j/k

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, Jon (350 TBI!)
91 Red My website

If you plan on making a 7747 file let me know if I can help in any way.

[This message has been edited by V8Astro Captain (edited September 30, 2001).]

Definitely am planning on it. Whether or not it will work out or not, who knows? I'd like to be able to get it working with existing interface designs like the AKM cable and such.

What exactly do you need?

I'm with V8Astro. I will help you A LOT if you get 7747 support. Like a REAL LOT!!! I need it!!!

Also, my programming helper is in need of a MAF 1227165 ECM with 8192 (1987-89) for his vette. He's in Holland, so parts are kinda scarce for him over there. If anyone can help out, just let me know.

Actually 86-89 all carry the same part number ACD 16198259 - it's the PROM that controls baud rate.

I have a spare '165, I got it for $40 but I planned to use it for the $110 core charge in order to have two known good computers. But now I wonder about the one presently in the car.

I still can't get E6 to hook to my '86 even though I see that Sarkee has the same car and it hooks fine on his. He is using the AKM cable - I'm rolling my own. Maybe that's it?

Anyway, I wrote some SW to sync onto the 160 baud stream, but when I blast the 4 byte 8192 baud request for mode 1 ($80 56 01 29) the ECM just ignores it. I tried the Gargano interface first(resistor+diode+Max233) and saw that the 8192 data pulses were only about 2v compared to the ECM's 5 volt pulses. So, I wired up the 4 transistor+Max233 LT1-type interface and verified that gives a full 5 v on the 8192 pulses. The ECM should have been able to see this, maybe I'm not sending when it's looking?

BTW Craig, I watched E6 go to work on the scope and it is blasting away a goodly amount of 8192 requests, almost as many as the 8192 attack mode program I wrote to flood the ECM with requests. I don't think there is a software issue in linking to the '86 ECM. After all, some ARE successful as noted earlier. I will try ver 8.2 when I get a chance, though.

I think the ECM is going into 10K mode because the pulse stream looks different w and w/o the resistor in place.
... but,
The 160 baud stream should be a 25 item list according to the PROM hack, but I'm seeing a 9 byte repeat: FD FC 8C C4 FC C4 46 62 23 and none of this matches any of the PROM info, so maybe it's NOT in 10K mode. There is also a 3.9K mode according to Helms...

This is frustrating as hell, but I am SLOWLY eliminating possibilities. Evidence is presently pointing towards either the interface design (still?)or a malfunctioning ECM.

Am I missing anything obvious here?

Jim
Red '86 4+3

BTW: I previously reported success with E6, but that was a case where 64 zeros were received which passed the checksum test and fooled the program into thinking it linked. Doh!

I'm no expert and I haven't had the time (school) to get into this stuff hardcore...yet, but, if I'm not mistaken there are a BUNCH of modes for the 7747 and 8746 ecm. I know the 10K and 3.9K blah blah, It's different modes for the ecm. One is ALDL (SUCKS BIG ***), backup mode, normal mode, and diagnostic mode. I have no idea what the difference is between diacnostic and backup mode but I do remember that backup and ALDL mode set the ecm into a crappy mode (kind of like limp home mode for me). I only know this because I have diacom. I've also seen the hardware hookup for diacom, it has lots of transistors switching for different resistor values which I'm asumming are ecm modes. Either way the ecm should be giving data in any of those modes.
If you need some help let me know through e-mail. I seem to be one of the very few ecm guys that is working with the 8746 (everyboyd went to 7747 ).

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, Jon (350 TBI!)
91 Red My website

I thought that the 7747 was the older of the two, I'm not positive tho. You could make a 7747 work with your car real easy, its all the same stuff except for the MAT, which the 7747 doesn't have.

Another V8 Astro guy I talk to has a Caprice cop car that had the 8746 in it. He wanted to do all the fun stuff to it that he did to the Astro so he switched it over to the 7747 and said it was real easy.



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'92 Astro 350 TBI Edelbrock intake, MSD 6AL, 3.42's, 2.5" exhaust, Flowmaster 40 2 chamber, B&M 2nd stage shift kit, 255 60 R15 tires on AR-727's, Polished & Bored TBI, Custom EPROM in progress

I had v8.1 working also; returning data real-time, anyway, all 5 pages. Couldn't get a dump, though. I just d/l'd 8.2 last night, was going to try it later...But I see 8.3 has been released!...

As well as the AKM cable (which is well made), I also have one of Justin Nortons' home-brewed cables...It looks like sh*t, but it does work, so there is an established schematic somewhere out there...

Just finished trying v8.3...It "connects", but the values I'm getting in the 5 pages are fluctuating wildly, and don't appear anywhere near correct. Can't dump the EPROM to file; I can log a "run", but the values are garbage.

I ran E6 to compare; E6 works fine (still). I retried v8.1; now it's giving the same wild readings as 8.3 (I wasn't sure about the values before; now I can't tell).

Email to Craig --> *

Make sure you guys set things up in the 'defaults' menu, such as turning of 'offline mode'. Might be that easy, may be a deeper evil.

Well, good news for me tonite. A new reman ECM took care of the linking problem. Maybe somebody ran 12v up the serial line one too many times? Who knows....

E6 still won't auto-link, but a few 1's and I'm in - good enough. Got the Prom to dump and it is the same bin as the assembly listing I'm using - nice to know. Tried 8.2 but no success - didn't look at the default settings...

Jim
Red 86 4+3

OK, we're on a fast track here. I've issued another update. Ver 8.4 now. I tested it out, and it works on my car, but there are a couple of issues I think. Please let me know what difficulties you encounter when trying ver 8.4 this time around.

Sorry for all the false starts, but the program went through several major restructurings without interim testing, and not all by my hand. While the changes are good, it is taking me awhile to get reoriented on a different approach.

I was unable to get 8.2 or 8.3 to work after changing the setting for a 165 ecm in online mode. An older version sync'd easily.

James

[This message has been edited by james_fearn (edited October 01, 2001).]

I just used Ver 8.4 and it seemed to work fine. It sync'd up with the ECM and displayed most data correctly. I did notice that my TPS showed -13 or something like that at idle. The vss reading was in Km/h too (boooo, hissssssss). More testing to come.......

Thanks again Craig..... You da man!

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1987 GTA L98 MD8
355, TFS Heads, LT4 Hot Cam
My GTA

The Minnesota F-body Club

Ditto here...Except for my car idling at 33 RPM indicated by v8.4...Still no EPROM BIN dump...And the spreadsheet of values for a "run" was empty...

But Craig's making progress!

DRAT! I spoke too soon! I have run into the old locking up problem that I had with E6 ver 6.004. I will get everything sync'd up and doing good for a few minutes and then it just stops receiving data and every time I try reestablishing communication with the car it just locks up again, even if i restart my laptop. Arghhhhh. I am starting to think this laptop is a complete P.O.S. It is a Toshiba Pentium 75 with 40Mb RAM so you would think it would be more than enough to handle this task. I have also turned all power management functions off and run the program from DOS and from Windoze (98SE) through the executable provided. Hmmmmm.........

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1987 GTA L98 MD8
355, TFS Heads, LT4 Hot Cam
My GTA

The Minnesota F-body Club

My Compaq has a 4mb "Diagnostic Partition" with Power Management enabled in BIOS; can't be disabled. Only way around it is to jiggle the mouse or hit a key occasionally...

I tried it this morning to try and diagnose my "it starts then dies 2 seconds later" problem (probably MAF) and had a lot of problems. I only got it to link once and then when I tried to use L to log, it wouldn't save to disk; I encountered that problem a few times before where it wasn't saving anything. Created the header but no data.

Are you sure it's really not saving the data? Right now, the program creates the 'new' file and headers as soon as it closes the 'old' file. So you end up with an 'old' file that is really your newest and a 'new' file that is just the template for the next file. Try looking at one of the other CSV files that is created. It seemed to work fine in offline mode in this respect, but I can't speak for car-hooked function yet. Looked like it was working, but I didn't check.

BTW, I'll get rid of that 'ghost' file retention shortly here.