I am working on a friends car here and am having trouble connecting to the ECM to datalog.

It's a '7730 and I used the FWD $a1 with the spark offset corrected for distributor (FWD uses a 59* offset for DIS). TunerPRO RT, Willems chip burner and a basic pre-made RS232 interface. Correct .ads, .xdf and matching mask.

I connect to the car and get "cable not found or functioning". The cable worked in the past, tried 2 different ECM's, even tried connecting the data stream right off the pin a8 (orange datastream) in the connector and connecting ground to the battery. I get ~4.5-4.8v at both the ECM connector and at the ALDL port under the steering wheel with the key on.

Is there a wy to test the RS232 chip in the cable? Do the RS232's go bad often?

Any help/input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-john

EDIT: The code I put in appears to be working fine and I triple checked the chip burn since I am using the SST512 chips, made sure the offset is correct, and the car is running fine.

EDIT again: Also put the stock memcal/tune back in and I get the same reading, sound like the cable to you? I don't have another running car here I can test on

What is the .ads you are using?

I haven't had much luck with the ads labled as "1227730.ads" or whatever it is, to connect to $A1.

I'll have to fire up my test bench soon and check this on the bench for a sanity check.

I wasn't even getting a signal when using the "tools>preferences>test for valid cable using settings" in TunerPro. I am using the 1227730-a1.ads that was posted by Dave on v6z24 (Ryan Hess, Issaac Hayes etc as authors/editors).

EDIT: This is the same car I chatted with you about a while back. Everything seems like it should work, that's why I think it may be the cable even though the cable has worked in between. I think his car may have gremlins. I have tried 4 ECM's now, several stock PROMs and tested the voltage in all places.

Well, when you've replaced everything else, but one item and it still doesn't work........

OK, this is driving me nuts!

Same laptop, different car. Mastach cable still wasn't working today, so I made a patch cable using the single resistor, regulator and a few caps today, and still nothing (actually soldered the components right to the chip ). Even tried the large regulator and using an old cell phone car charger just in case the laptop suddenly decided not to send 5v through the 7/8 pins (still nothing), and even added another cap bridging the 12v and ground, but it started to pour outside and had to lay it up for the night before I could try it this last time.

I tried using both TunerProRT and ALDL_test, both cables, 2 cars, nothing, nothing, nothing

Any suggestions now? I know the laptop port is working fine since I use it to send programs via rs232 to the CNC machines at the shop.

Guess I'll have to break down and buy a pricey cable but them I'm afraid things will still be the same...