Hi Gang,
This may sound stupid but I was wondering if you could load the Prom info onto the laptop and tweak that until you get it to run the way you want instead of burning Prom after Prom until you get it right?

 

Xtronics, the guys that make the pocket programmer, make a emulator to do just that, if you do a search of old posts in this forum for emulator you'll find a post about it.

 

Anybody here actually have the Transtronics emulator? Is it easy to use? Work well? $90 isn't chicken scratch... but I'm interested!

 

Intronics ain't it?
Anyway if you mean the Pocket Programmer one, noone I know has gotten it to work.

 

I believe that they changed their name from Intronics to Transtronics. Their website is now <A HREF="http://www.xtronics.com/">http://www.xtronics.com/</A>

So nobody has it working yet eh? Not good... isn't there an transtronics rep. who visits this board? Have commentary?

I'll be more than happy to do a no-cost test of this product... if it works then I'll buy it, but if it doesn't work, I don't want to be stuck with a $90 paperweight.

You there?

--andrew

 

Xtronics, are you on the board ?

 

Looks like not I just shot them a note, hopefully they will help out.

BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
<><

[This message has been edited by Bob Wooten (edited May 10, 2001).]

 

The emulator allows you to make changes without burning and changing a ROM every time.


There are a few pointers to note. On some cars making a change while the car is running will cause the computer to go into 'limpback' mode. I know on Hondas, this only happens sometimes and simply turning the engine off and back on would get things going again. On some EFI computers it never causes a problem. I have heard that on one type you could make a change at idle, but not at other throttle settings.


One alternative to the Emulator is using a 29F256 chip – it is a flash device that programs quite rapidly. It would require stopping the engine and moving it from EFI computer to the programmer and back.


There was a problem with the latest hardware revision – but it was fixed in software. Be aware that the old version will not work with the new software and visa-versa.


------------------

 

Xtronics,

I would be interested in trying a unit out with my car on a trial basis either no money up front or a guarantee of 100% refund less shipping if it does not work for me.

Other people on this board have complained that they are unable to get the emulator to work so I don't want to shell out $100 for a paperweight...

--andrew

 

Being in customer service myself, the question that he is bound to ask is what problems are they having, specifically.
~ is the image not loading to the emulator?
~ is it loading but the ECM not running off of it?
~ Does it work if you shut the car completely down & then load the image & start the car back up?
~ does it work if you dont shut the car down, & load the image into the emulator?
~ is the emulator running off target power or off of external power? (the ECM maybe be powering the emulator down if off of target power).

Just trying to help out

PS, thanks for helping out Karl.

BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
<><

[This message has been edited by Bob Wooten (edited May 11, 2001).]

 

Does this meant that no one has bought one & tried to make it work?

I have my own story but it is w/another vendor & have not gotten serious yet.

Just curious.
BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

No one? I thought that there were some guys out there with these?

bummer
BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

I'd like to try this, too, if it can support 7747 logic.

 

I am no pro when it comes to electrical eng, but my understanding is that it does not care what you are doing with it. the emulator is only emulating a particular prom (be it UV or EE or flash). what you run it in & what you run in it, it does not care.

Personally I think that the problems that people are having with the emulators is coming from the limp home mode. from what i understand some of the emulators out there look for buss acitivity & if it sees it, it has a cow. when the gmecm sees that the prom is not executing code (aka loading in the new bin) any more it goes into limp home mode. the emulator sees that & has a cow. this is my theory, but as i said up front, i am not the pro with this stuffs.

the one that i have has a line that ties to the reset line for the ecm. this stops all bus activity, so............. it ought to work. I blew up one of the ecm's that i have putting in the reset line so i dont want to do it with the one that i have left & have not had the time to run down to the wrecker to get another one (or two) yet. I called & talked with one of the techs @ the mfg & he said that there are a number of people out there that are using them for this purpose & there is another trick.

that trick is that the target (the ecm) powers the emulator, in the gmecm's (@ least in my 7730 & all the other derivitives) there is a power monitoring/power handling chip. I am not sure how it works but it has to do with turning on power to the ecm. the tech said that the people that have reliable repeatable results with them use external power so that they are not using the power from the ecm. my bet is that @ some point the ecm turns off this power & that it screws with the emulator. again I have not proven that but from what i gather from looking @ the print for my ecm, (from ludis' site), this actually makes a LOT of sense.

BW



------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

I gotta try this. Sounds like it could save some time for me as I don't burn the PROMS myself, a buddy in CA does, so I have to email the bin, and wait for a new chip. not fun... If I could use the emulator, I could just get to the finished product and be done with it...

 

that is kinda what I think. I dont have the time time that it takes to work on it a little @ a time. I get about 6 hours @ a crack & would like to do as much damage in that period of time that I can. cause it takes me an hour to get back up to speed every time.

BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

This sounds like a really handy tool, too bad I don't have a pocket programmer. I got my PB-10 way before I knew the pocket programmer existed!

 

If any of yall are interested, here is the one that i have, it is about $180.

BW

http://www.tech-tools.com/er3.htm



------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

So, Bob. I can use this with a 7747 TBI ECU??? Sounds like you can use it just about anywhere.

How can you be sure that the PROM pins (well, pin receiver slots) in the ECU will match the emulated PROM pins on the emulator?

 

if i am not mistaken your ECM uses the 128K prom does it not? if that is the case then you are good to go. the issue here is pinout & for the most part all the "old" proms (yes these are all old, new stuff is flash & surface mount, etc) have the "same" pinout. there was a standard back then (Jadec, or something like that) & all the 27CXXX proms all conformed to that. I am not sure about the 64K & 32K proms but I am sure that the vendor will be able to tell you. This means that you go into the emulator & tell it what size the prom needs to be & it loads it up automatically.

let me be clear, (just cause i am dumb that way) I have one but I dont have it working yet. The vendor that i bought mine from said that it "should" work, & they have had customers have it work, but he did not know what ECM's they were (he specifically said Honda & others, but could not tell me what others meant). I think that i am fixin to load in the sy/ty code into my car & when i do that i am going to get serious about getting the emulator working.

But i have to get a converter into my car & take it to the track first. I have to drop my 60' times to <1.8 & get the car into the 12's before i move on with life. I think that the car ought to be faster than it is, but it is not. not sure what that is about, but i am over it. maybe a blower or some NOS will fix that up.

BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

So just to beat this to death!!! Sorry I am new at figuring this. This will allow you to make changes to the program. Once you figure out the best changes you burn a chip with the same settings. So you have to have a chip burner and an eraser and now this. Hmmmm.....sounds like a good idea but too bad there wasn't something like the newer OBDII setups in them. I would love to be able to hook my notebook up to the computer and continuously change the values for the driving style you want! But hey, that would be in a perfect world.

------------------
91 Z28 Camaro
305 TPI
Flowmaster 3" exhaust
700R4 with 2000 Stall and shift kit 3.42 rearend
One sweet sounding system

 

you are right on the money. there is such a thing it is called a FelPro system. the thing is, well, $. So, we do what we can with what we have. for the most part, I do it cause i can, & it makes me infinately more smart (when you start with 0, the gain is imeasureable, regardless of the actual value).

BW

------------------
Bob Wooten
71 Camaro, 91 EFI
r71chevy@earthlink.net
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
&lt;&gt;&lt;

 

Did you have any luck with your econo-rom yet? Who did you buy it from? Looks like they list another distributor besides Digi-key. Maybe this would be a good candidate for a GP?

 

I just won an ebay auction for an econorom, paid $76 for it. It is an econorom II though, not the current econorom III. As far as I can tell however, the only difference is in the speed of the download! I don't see myself making that many changes though.. I can wait

Anyway, this guy supposedly has many of these available. Just search on ebay for "econorom" to see what's available.

When I get mine, I'll keep you guys posted on how well (if!) it works..

 

I have not got around to it yet. I have been busy @ work & frankly to busy having fun @ the track. Now that summer is hear & work has slowed a bit I am hoping to put in some time in the garage.

BW

------------------
Bobalos
aka Bob W.
www.r71camaro.homestead.com
r71chevy@earthlink.net
&lt;&gt;&lt;