Hunter Motorsports

Found out an interesting security method that Superchips is using for the SD cars. The adaptor is the security.

I burned a FLASH prom for the car (1990 Camaro - 350 auto, formerly 305) and swapped the Superchips prom for the flash prom I burned. Instand SES light. Hmmm It should have worked - so I put a OEM AUJP prom into the Superchips adapter - same thing!!! WTF, That definately should have worked. Went back to the drawing board and did some research to make sure I wasn't out to lunch - and I was'nt. Here is what I found:

The pin locations are moved around on the adapter. A couple of them are swapped, so if you try to use a standard eprom or FLASH prom that has been programmed in the usual fashion - it won't work. This also explains why the information I downloaded from the Superchips EPROM was unreadable in TunerCat.

Here is what I did:
On the off chance, and at the risk of ruining a perfectly good FLASH prom, I decided to try burning the prom in the Superchips adapter using the modified header method.
It worked.
The FLASH prom burned with no problems and the car ran just as it should.
So I copied the BIN file of the Superchips prom while it was in the adapter, and of course it was then readable in TunerCat.

Just wanted to share this info in case anyone else has been horrified when trying to work with a Superchips adapter.

Grim Reaper

Hmm, I have an ADS Superchip and have never noticed this. BUT I always program directly via the "DIY" memcal to PP adapter.

BTW, the BIN from my ADS Superchip was the worst BIN I had ever seen. The spark and fuel tables made no sense.

Hunter Motorsports

The ADS chips are different - Superchips is a different company, and I think ADS is now out of business. I had never seen this method of security before - kind of strange actually, but once I checked continuity of the terminals on the adapter with a DVOM I figured out what they had done.

The Superchips bin was a big POS also. Some very minor changes to the main spark tables. Thats it. No fuel work. No knock retard work. Lazy bastards! Just makes me that much happier to be burning myself.

Hehehe - does this mean that I am a pyromaniac??? Burning???

Programmer

It probably isn't the smartest thing to reveal in a public forum...at least you didn't reveal which pins are swapped.

I'll agree that some of their programming isn't that great...and other stuff is pretty good.

Geez...sure hope you're not a SuperChips dealer...

Programmer

poorboy8

Sounds like a great thing to post in a public forum..........friggin' rip offs

Programmer

So if I steal from you, that's ok ? It's one thing to directly use their boards and unscramble what they did to use THEIR programming, and another to do your own work. Tuning programs including adapter boards are cheaper than buying even one performance chip from SC--so why spread this around ?

Programmer.

Grim Reaper

Programmer is correct. First, many companies purposely use a variety of "security" features to stop you from reading their eproms. If we were to start PUBLICLY telling people how to bypass these "security" features, they could take action against the entire www.thirdgen.org site and cause us to get shutdown. Remember Napster?

But, in all honesty, none of those "custom eproms" will hold a candle to a properly tuned eprom that you can burn yourself. Why? Because you have a major advantage that they do not - "hands on" access to the engine and all the time in the world to tweak it. NOBODY can burn you a chip that good from "long distance" - they are going to have to make guesses about your engine, especially when it comes to spark advance and detonation. So, to avoid possible warranty claims, they will all tend to be less aggressive on the spark advance as they might be if they had access to your engine and test it.

PS: Welcome to the DIY Prom Board Programmer.