Hey everyone, I finally finished building my cable and I installed Craig Moates software. The only thing that is missing is the ALDL connector, but I'm just using some wires to go into the plug for now. I tried to get it working last night, but no luck. So I've got some questions and hopefully you can help me troubleshoot.

My car is a 1989 Firebird Formula 350... with the 165 computer right?

1) Which pins do I use in my connector? E or M. It's a bit hard to search the archives for the letters E and M.

2) How close is the tolerance for the 10K resitor that jumpers across A and B? I've got an 8.2K leftover from the cable I built, will that work?

3) How is Craig's software supposed to initiate the connection? I hit return after the startup screen and it just sits there with the

Sending packet: <some hex numbers>
Waiting for echo/response:

and nothing happens. If I press 1 again nothing happens, and if I press 2 nothing happens.

I'm using a fairly new Toshiba laptop running Win95. The program is running in a DOS window. Should I boot to DOS to run it?


[This message has been edited by AlexJH (edited July 06, 2001).]

 

Check your parallel port settings, no EPP or anything funky, just plain old parallel port.
On my 88 Vette, it was E, there was no wire connected to the ALDL at M. Don't know the tollerances on the resister...



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88 Z51 4+3 Corvette
94 Trans Am GT

 

I used pin M. Which cable did you use. Are you powering it from the car? because Craigs program won't supply power to the port like some of the cables have diagrams for. I'm not sure about the resistor but you should be able to find a 10K resistor just about anywhere if not try making an equivalent 10K resistor out of what you got.

Series
R1 + R2 = R3

Parallel
1/R1 + 1/R2 = 1/R3

Good luck

 

Thanks, I'm using the MAX233 cable from the schematic on Craig's site. I've got 12V power coming from the cig lighter. ::grin:: I'm an Electrical Engineering student so I should be able to figure out the resistance. I'm just lazy and don't want to go digging through my parts bin if I have one sitting on my desk that will work. Basically I just want to figure out where to start troubleshooting.

CanadianBeast, what year are you?

Warlock, parallel port? The pinout on the schematic looked like a serial port to me.

 

89 camaro

 

hey, I got the same problem, hook it up and it justs sits and waits for a response.

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90 IROC 5.7l (L98)
ram air, K&N's, air foil,Flows

LIKE A ROC

http://members.nbci.com/IrocZgarage/home.htm

 

Could be...only used it a couple of times before my engine and trany came out and that was a while ago...