very new to this stuff, but i seen ed mayers article where he showed the boards, to me it looks a little like hacking sat cards, but anyways, what exactly do i need to buy here, my car is a 1986 305 tpi with 27,000 original miles on it,

i already have my comp cam sitting in the box here, but the mechanic says to learn to do your chip before he puts it in,

so i hope all you pro's will help me out, i look forward to doing this mod,

thanks

 

I'm happy with my "Pocket Programmer II" (PP2).
Works off my parallel port, easily portable (needs 9v though), programs a lot of different chips without an adapter, it's fast, has a high quality ZIF socket, and has buffer compare and edit functionality in the s/w.
I'm burning Atmel AT29C256 EEPROMS (which is what you will be needing) and have only had 3 bad burns in over 200 re-writes. Since I started shutting down the background programs, all burns have been good.

Don't expect to master it over the weekend.
Once the eng is modified, ecm tuning can get tricky.
I've spent close to 2 months tweaking my idle and cruise modes (lots of mods at one time), and I'm just now to the point where it won't embarrass me in public (I.E. dying, surging, missing, high idle, etc).

A DIY Wide Band O2 meter comes highly recommended.

If you haven't already; download some type of bin editing s/w (GMECMedit and WinBin are both popular and free) and get familiar with all the strange terms.

Once you get started, write down EVERYTHING you change and the results of the change. I keep a copy of the bin files everytime I change anything. I'm at ver#160 now.
If I goof, I can always go back to something that was sorta working and start over. I also keep another EEPROM in the car that will get me home if need be.

You'll also need some way of interfacing with the ECM to see whats going on. Winaldl s/w (free), a custom interface cable and a laptop works for me.

Hope that helps.