First of all, I want to get a cable for data logging on my car. I found a couple on ebay for around USD$35-40 plus shipping. Does anyone here have a cable? Has anyone made one? These ones on ebay do have some electronics involved, but it may just be for the pretty LED. I was wondering if anyone has made one with just a serial connector, proper wire, and a couple of resistors. I see potential for a poll. Second, does anyone with a 2.8 have data from a stock, and well-tuned and running engine that they could send me for comparison? I'm troubleshooting.

I bought one.

$$$?

Well, I got one vote for each, so that doesn't help. The person who voted for me to make one should give me some instructions on how to do so.

Like $40 or 50.


I bought it from AKM. I personally know Steve Ruse, the other main guy that makes him, but I couldn't get in touch with him for some reason....I think he was redoing his site at the time and the email was switched or something.


http://www.akmcables.com/

http://www.wotelectronics.com/ (Steve's Site)

I'm throwing my vote for making your own. Took me all of like.... 5 minutes to make a quick on.

http://www.techedge.com.au/vehicle/aldl160/aldl_hw.htm

Pretty easy schematic there

btw, got the parts at radio shack to make 5 cables... ran me like $8

made mine 2 days ago, tried it out last night,works great

Awesome, absolutely awesome. Thanks to all. I will definitely make one then.

Doward: did you do it exactly as the schematic shows (it mentioned something about being for Australian aldl ports)?

Also, anyone have any data from a good running stock 2.8 that they'd be willing to send me for comparison?

Thanks again.

Well, I finally went out and got the stuff for the ALDL connector. But my laptop doesn't have a serial port. So I bought a Belkin serial adapter (it's actually for PDAs and I bought it a long time ago), but WinALDL does recognize it. So I didn't get to test it. Also, I don't think my ALDL connector has pin H, so no LED indicator unless I tap into a 12V source.

I'm still waiting for someone with a good running 2.8 to cough up some data for comparison.

I'm torn, so I won't vote. I love the idea of making your own cable; but then we have to rig up a stupid connector to the ALDL. I saw where one guy hung a connector though off the back of the ALDL connector's wires; he spliced in his own, which was pretty cool.

But as I get older, I start to want "professional" looking stuff, and a connector that mates with the ALDL perfectly sounds pretty damn good.

Tom, i couldn't agree more.

Not to mention it's a real pita to get bare wires to stay in the connector.

16 gauge speaker wire, tinned ends. Perfect fit.

I'm going to dredge up my old post here. I got a different laptop, one with a serial port. But WinALDL is telling me it is unable to open the serial port. Do I need to have my cable hooked up and the ignition on for WinALDL to recognize the port? I'm sure I had WinALDL working fine a while ago without the cable plugged in.

Try telling WinALDL that the serial port is on different COMs...

Shouldn't have to; you could try searching the 'net for the laptop manufacturer's instructions to see if they made some kind of "auto-sense/detect" for the serial port- but I doubt they did.

You could always get an RS-232 diagnostic connector; it's a DB25-DB25 (so you'd need 9 pin adapters) with 9 LED's on it that show the status of each port line (DCD, TX, RX, etc). That way you coudl tell if your laptop's trying to communicate on the serial port. If the lights don't flicker, the laptop's not using the right serial port - like TS said, the program might be reaching out to COM1 but in the startup BIOS, the computer really thinks the DB9 serial port is COM3.

The RS-232 diagnostic adapter goes between the laptop port and the cable, but it can work "just" on the laptop end (without a cable).

Well, I know the com port is working because I tested it with a serial mouse. I tried uninstalling the mouse so that WinALDL would recognize the port, no go. I checked the bios and HW set-up in Control Panel, both of which say that it is com port 1. I've tried changing the port in WinALDL and the only one that says OK is com 2, but that is the modem. Thanks for the responses though. Got any more ideas?

Alright, all is well now... sort of. I got WinALDL to recognize the com port. The problem was in what I said before. I said I got the serial mouse working. To use a serial mouse (this is Windows 98) you need to change something in Accessibility Options; this was the problem. I just started reversing settings I remembered changing and lo and behold I fixed it.

However the old laptop that I'm using is dying (either the HD or motherboard), but hopefully it will last until I test my car.

Well the idea of the RS232 tester wasn't to test the COM port, it was to see if data was ever being sent over the port. (RX and TX would have flashed; if they stayed steady, "no attempt" was being made to talk to the car- as opposed to a "failed attempt", if you know what I mean)

So b/c you told Windows you had a serial mouse, Windows was holding the com port just for the mouse? And that's why WinALDL couldn't use the com port?

Or is it that WinALDL treats the ALDL link as a serial mouse?

Well since WinALDL wasn't recognizing the port, I never tried to collect data.

As far as the mouse goes, I assume since Windows was expecting a mouse to be connected to the com port, the OS had the port open, making WinALDL unable to open it also.

Gonna dig this one up again. Has anyone successfully got a laptop with a USB to serial adapter working with WinALDL?

Okay, so I went out to my car with a working laptop that had a serial port and I didn't get any data. The only thing I succeeded in was causing the car to stall (or almost stall). What am I doing wrong?

Can someone give me ALL their COM port settings?

Thanks.

Atleast your car runs

I just bought my cable for $35 us and $10 shipping to my house so it will be here within 2 weeks MAX, then i can start playing. I would hook you up with some data logs but my car doesn't run in the first place so I wouldn't be much of a help at this moment in time. Although once I get it running, I've already got ne wplugs and wires, will be doing the timing when its running and a few other tune-up things, then I don't mind putting some Data on the net.

Serial -> USB I have heard doesn't work 99% of the time so if you can't get it working right then you might just want to give up and get yourself a serial only setup.

I agree with whoever said more professional look. I saw the OBD1 build schematics and was like heck I could do that, but when you think about it for the extra $20 for a nice looking unit, professionally built and working, tested aswell, then you know your getting what you paid for.

I am currently going to attempt to use EFILive for the 2.8L as I haven't found any other good sites for tuning and such but we will see here in a little how well it works.

Yeah, I just tested it with a laptop that HAS a serial port. The USB to serial adapter is another story and another laptop. But, no luck.

edit: So this is the exact circuit I'm using (with a 2N2907 transistor). Is this the circuit others have used?

I bought a cable off of www.aldlcable.com

I cannot get it to work for the life of me...

I tried every program on that list... only ONE of them gave me ANY data at all... and it was all 'invalid header'-type stuff...

has anyone ever gotten WinALDL to work on a 3.1 motor? I have no idea what ECM I have in my 1990 3.1...

WinALDL will not work with the '90 ECU. The '90 ECU is a 1227730, which is a P4 ECU with its own UART enabling it to talk bi-directional 8192 baud. WinALDL is 160 baud only.

interesting... what are the big differences between the 2.8 ECU and the 3.1 ECU?

I thought that the engines were identical except a few sensors and the internals??

also I got the ALDL cable to work on my 1990 3.1 for anyone that was interested in this...
http://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/show...68#post2283168

Since this post has been dug up... I never did get anything out of the ECM on the car. There was no data coming to WinALDL as far as I can tell. I used the circuit I posted above.

Any ideas?

hrm the cable I bought can do 160 and 8192..

have you tried any other software, and are you sure you have the right ECM file?

I'm using the 1986 2.8L MPFI file. I can only assume that includes 1986 Camaro V6s. I'm wondering if maybe the schematic for the cable is not quite right as the webpage for that schematic also has Australian car info on it.

I'm using the cable described on www.aldlcable.com

works great

Yeah, I suppose when I have more time I can build that circuit. There are a few more parts than the one I am using now. Does anyone know if the '86 2.8 needs the 10k resistor across the A and B pins?

C'mon folks, I wanna know the answer to this question.

all I can say is the 1990 does not require it...

Scrapmaker, thanks for that link- I like how they just sell the connector itself. What's the deal with the cigarette plug adapter? I thought the cable could get +12 volts from the ALDL itself... I don't get why aldlcable.com 's cable has the lighter plug on it.

Did they say it was "optional" to hook up the cig plug?

they say somewhere that you can get the 12v of the ALDL... or off the serial somewhere... but I just figured this method was simple and worked... and it did, so I'm very pleased...

tunerpro RT works great btw

I just wish there was some better graphical program to view/playback the ALDL stream...

I don't know about your connector TomP, but mine doesn't have the pin where 12V would be.

You need the lighter plug plugged in for the +12v off the www.aldlcable.com setup. It provides a solid +12v source to drive the circuitry, where as a laptops serial port does not always provide an assured power source and different laptops come up in different states.
You can see the schematic for the circuit and a description at:
http://www.aldlcable.com/sc/pages.asp?id=24

They do make a cable for 94-95's with the 16 pin connector that pulls the +12v from the 16 pin car connector. See:
http://www.aldlcable.com/sc/details.asp?item=aldlobd2

If there is a Datamaster version for your car, it is a nice program, try:
http://www.ttspowersystems.com/DM_Beta_Software.htm
WinALDL is great for the 160 Baud cars

edit: Okay, the answer is that for the '86 2.8L you do need the 10k resistor across the A and B terminals. I have obtained some data and put it in an Excel file. Check out this thread:

http://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/show...hreadid=297958