history of prom burning......
 

It would be cool to find out how this all started. Prom burning is not going anywhere. So it seems important to get the facts out there.

I'll just tell you what I think. It might be very wrong so feel free to correct me...... It all started with a group of guys that worked on cracking the GM code on a few ecms. My guess is that a company hired the group in order to start custom ecm programming. They cracked the code and aftermarket prom chips was born. Something happened that cause a breakup of that said group. Rumor has it that some of them hate each other, or some ****. Some/one of the scorn members distributed the hacks that eventually cropped up on ecmguys site. From what I understand one of the members of that work group is on this site. Wonder if that's true....

The history of diy-efi.org is a mystery to me. So is the development of tunercat.

Not sure of the exact date of this board's birth. Maybe Tim can shed some light on how/why he created this board.


My goal is to collect information for the preservation of prom burning history....

There were several groups, and several individuals. Like many items, there's alot of pararel developement. And GM, had given some info to some companies, and who knows how far that traveled. Then there were several college engine/emission programs that had some interesting stuff from GM on loan.

The first commercial GM editor was either Tweaker, or from *The Turbo Shop*, as far as I can tell.

On DIY-EFI there were alot of crumbs dropped for some various bits of code, and Programming 101 was the first Pulbic Domaining of brute force reverse engineering of any GM code that I know of.

There have been some commercial chip guys from almost day one, and it seems that at least some reverse engineered the code from scratch.

So I was somewhat right.! That was obscure info I put together...kind of wispers from different folks. This is the oldest info. Maybe we can bring the whole story of the early years to light. That's the first bit of history that'll get lost in time. If anyone cares...

Bruce, what was your involvement, if you don't mind me asking. What do you recall of the early years?

Enquiring minds want to know.....

Really, I have a great respect for the pioneers, and from what I understand, Bruce is one of them, and even if they don't like each other, I want to give credit where credit is due. And if Bruce is the only one I know of, he'll get it all........:)

I think this post already should get a sticky, but definately should if/when it get's more information. It may just shed some light into the many hours involved in getting where the hobby is today, and where some of the ocommercial operations got some of their info from.....

Talking to Bruce or Rbob(only oldschoolers i know on thos board), some others may be lurking :-)

It will really reveal some fascinating insight as to the hows and whys and when thigns first came to light. I know some of the early days, but in parts and certainly not the whole. Bruce would be a far better scribe of this tale than I :-) Besides he was my only source on the early days ...

Amazing part of it is , the amount of people that have been burned by dumb slaps trying to make a buck or people who can "burn" a chip for anything ! Some of these people are still actively involved today, but as far as these forums now sit on the sidelines.. A few of them are the originals or very close to it from what I have been told :-(

Also, I side note that i believe has come up on this board before is all the flashburn/obd2 software was basically hacked and supposed to have been freeware until someone once again burned someone else :-(

Just remember that and if u see someone sellign stuff from DIY or chips thru here etc, let us know .... it will stop on these pages

Bruce, are u going to give us the rundown of the origin of prom burning in your own words?

later
Jeremy

I remember a Hot Rod or Car Craft article in the late 80's describing what I think was Hypertech's entry into hacking. Someone at that company or a predecessor company had an ECM controlled LG4 305 on a dyno. It had an electronic Q-Jet and a distributor. The operator noticed that the ECM was pulling timing as they poured on the power. They decided to figure out why that was happening and the result was one of the first aftermarket chips out there. I think primarily it fiddled with timing.

3.8trans am, You have alot of ":-)" in your post. Are you holding back info?:D


Man, I hope this thread works out. It would be cool to know how prom burning started. At least we know(indirectly) the diy part came from guys that put the hacks in public view. Grumpy had a part in that, from what I understand. There is another guy I know that worked on the hacks. Wonder what happened.

Lets just say I've met a few of the lurkers who were there during grd zero :-)

Besides, I wasnt there, it should be told by someone who was.

and I dont believe i have the whole story , only bits and pieces, so names , dates and all that kind of stuff would be impossible.

Keep this thread around a little and maybe they will fess up..

Search old school archives at DIY_EFI may prove insiteful as well
later
Jeremy

I've been trying to think of how to put all the pieces together. And even having been in this for a while, I can't claim to a full picture of it. Nor can I name some of the background people involved, I just don't know them.

But, what I can do is tell some of what went on.

The early start of DIY Programming, was basically at DIY-EFI when it was at Ohio State. There had been others that had already cracked some ecms, and gave important pointers to folks about such things as how the math worked on some items. The early stuff was on Compuserve. At DIY-EFI there were some lurkers who took to schooling, or at least again gave pointers about how to look at things, both on and off list. The problem was how would any of the major manufacturers take to having their work Public Domained. There had already been alot done with figuring out the code before I showed up. At one point I figured it was time to public domain what was held in a prom. there had been a group that was willing to work on a project like this but no one to lead it. So we talked amongst ourselves, and asked on list what ecm folks would be most interested in. It turned out to be GM, the Ford guys had talked about it, but none really had the time to invest in contributing. The plan of attack was to just brute force the hac. So we picked a easy to do candidate, the 747. Intially we were going to do several. One by one going thur each entry and seeing what it did, on the ecm bench, and then verify that info., in a real application. We had some ideas about how things were located, again, thur pointers. It took an insane amount of time to get into the finer areas. One of the guys early on, had given me a disassembly, so after the spark, and VE table, that was a huge aid in being able to see the shapes of the tables. Once we were well into it, and hadn't gotten any calls from the corporate lawyers, then we got more and more pointers. The at about the end, when we at wits end, we got some really good and complete infor.. If you go back, early enough you can see where the best we could muster off of the bench was the VEII table looked to be a multiplier. I forget all the errors, there were a few, but all in all the effort producted a fairly complete picture of what was in the ecm. And once things seemed safe from lawyers, folks got more and more active.

I've heard all sorts of rumors thur the years about how various firms started, and got their info., and not having been directly connected with them, I'm not going to publicly guess about what the truth really is. I do know some we're actively looking to hire folks to be able to crack ecms, since I was approached about that after doing the 747.

There was some of the GM original HUD materials floating around, and some folks had participated in some college projects that GM had supported. I don't know to what extend people had used that info., but only that the equipment was to be had.

Prior to the 747 work Steve Cole had been selling editing software. About the time of the 747, Tunercat was first made available, and then slightly later GMEPRO, was avialable. Some time after that, there was a very complete document about the 42 mask, rumored to exist. Ward Spoonmore, of Tunercat, and Terry Kelly from GMEPRO, I would call friends. Ward was one of the best teachers I've ever had. I'm not sure of his exact link(s) with GM, if at all, and I know Terry did most if not all of his own hac'ing. The GN guys had an editor called Tweaker that was available, early on. Ward passed away several years ago, and someone leaked the encryptment for GMEPRO, so after a while he kinda just dropped out of it.

Interesting bruce very interesting. i though i had put together a good picture from reading the archive but i geus there is some info missing there.

Bruce, thanks for that info! for some reason it seems important to preserve the history of prom tuning. I think that it's a hobby..the more time you put in means greater rewards.

One thing is missing from what you posted...dates/time frame.

While we wait for that.......

What about ecm guy?? His site is the first site to make the hacks public? Was he a part of some development team in the early days? Was it a personal friend of bruce. I heard that he passed away some time ago. Is ecmguy's real name Ward(founder of TC)?

I can only imagine that the desire to turn a profit is what tore some groups apart.....

Bruce, it must have been fun to go through the code like that. Really cool to be one of the first non-profit( I ASSume) guys to go though a fresh ecm and find the funtions. Would you say it was better than ***, or just on par?:D

The ECMGUY's site was towards the end or just after Programming 101.

More then you can possibly imagine. People probably scoff when I mention what could have been.

It was really interesting.
The other thing was I had gotten about all the bad news one could get, and with nothing to lose, thought it was time to see if GM would go after someone for Public Domaining the info.. While on the surface it's about code and tuning, it's really much more.

I'm going to start finding dates to make a time line. Please help if you can. The only solid date so far is the dissassembly of BUA.bin. The date is 07-22-89 . That was found under the bpw vs load section. Need to find out if that's the date for that section or the entire hack....

Ok, I have a simple question. Is the person know as "ecm guy" really dead(if so then what's his story?)? Or was this a "blanket character"?

Yes, he passed away some years ago.
Incredibly smart person, who'd been around since Roswell. ie, was around when anything electronic generated an Orange Glow when it was running. And over the years, seemed to have meet just about everybody, or so it seemed.

Patient, Honest, Hard worker, genuine good guy. Gifted, smart, and while teaching wasn't his calling, he tried to share as much as he could, as he understood things.

He had a few medical problems, one being cancer, and while it had at one time gone into remission, it returned with a vengence, and took him peacibly in his sleep one night.

The World suffered a loss with his passing.

Indeed. Has anyone noticed his yahoo site is down due to inactivity? Who oversees the site? It deserves to stay up.

He did a certain amount of *seeding*, dunno if anyone's really in charge of any of it.

Bruce, could you explain "the pointers". It really seems that everything would not of happened without the bits of info. Did these "lurkers" work for...uhh....geemmm?

IMO, the risk of corporate lawers are not that great, at this point..

Bruce.............nice words for ecmguy :thumbsup:

IIRC reading several mag articles in the early ninties about Bill Howell having worked at GM before going into business for himself. He was one of the only one's early on that I remember selling and/or tuning chips......mostly TBI since he would sell the retrofit kits that you could install on a "hot" motor. At that time I beleive the engine in the article was and early version ZZZ crate engine.

DM

Actually it was an Edelbrock dyno tuner who in 1984 first noticed the timing being pulled as he applied power to an lg4 camaro. I have the magazine if anyone is interested in seeing it i can post it on Craigs file site. Also in the same mag theres an article about Lingenfelters early successes with moding TPI equiped smallblocks but he doesnt get into the computer side of modding.

scan it, photobucket will host it and then just link it in this thread. I wouldn't mind reading that article.


You are saying that the LG4 code was "broken" first? That doesn't make sense considering the lack of support for the LG4.

Back in the day there were CCC carb performance chips for just about anything. My grandpa's LV2 307 had a hypertech in it. The LG4 was GMs corporate engine of choice in the 80s and was put into just about anything made with a V8.

As far as I know there are two that stand out from the rest.

ECMGuy and Ludis.

Everything I have read on this board and off are derived from their work.

My belief is that without them none of this would be possible.

J

Did any info actually get leaked from GM? Im working with the $0D and theres no way that the calibration info was derived by the same person that generated the hac. This and the verbage used in the section of the prom that contains actual comments from the engineers is similar to whats in the calibration section.

Information has absolutely leaked from GM, no doubt about it. And some still hold on to lots of that information.

Unfortunately one of those people is not me.

Questions, questions, questions!
 

So most of the info has not even see the light of day? Or would you say the DIY side of things did a good job of filling in the gaps?

DIY-EFI.org has been around since 94. That site was the first public DIY/EFI effort, correct? Was this group originally on compuserve?

The public hacs are dated 89 (for the BUA) and 90 (for ANHT). Was that a fake date? Considering the state of prom tuning in 89, who created those hacs? Are they actually from GM, the programming comments?



....

I have seen some information that GM did/still does realtime programming. It would be really cool to see documentation on one of these devices. The DIY side of emulation has advanced quite a bit on it's own. GM's programming equipment seemed to have different hardware though. So I'm not trying to link the two..

Maybe the few unknown people that are holding back information has info on GM's realtime programmer? Not sure why ANYONE would hold back ANY information, at this point. The P4 ECM's are two decades old. Nobody is going to care. Even if GM did care, one could upload the information through a public internet source. Once it's online, nobody can stop the information from spreading. In GM's eyes, the information has been stolen for a long time. It's not going to matter to them. I'm sure they did all they could when the aftermarket chip companies cropped up.


Maybe the unknowns are afraid of corporate lawyers? Protecting the source? Could it be greed? Since there are several folks, I guess the reasons vary. One thing is for sure though, there are less P4 equipped vehicles out there every year. Eventually there will be none, other than pleasure/historic examples. The information should be released, to preserve it. It will hold no value, if it never becomes known.

I couldn't just sit back and watch others struggle, especially when I had the answer. This hidden information everyone speaks of must be useful. It was leaked to be shared.

Re: Questions, questions, questions!
 

From really going through the ANHT hac it seems pretty obvious to me that this was good old fashioned hacking at its best.
There are just too many items with odd labling of descriptions to have come from GM. Allot of time was spent to trace the routine executions and work them backwards till most of it fit.
There may have been some "helper" information to get the ball rolling but if the info came from the source I would believe there would be less uncertainty on alot of the items.
Personally, Without the work of "ECMGuy" I would probably be settling for something purchased or just went carb.
Too bad he passed away from what I understand. Is definatly a loss to the community.

Re: Questions, questions, questions!
 

What info? You have all the info there is. You have a PROM and you have an ECM. There is nothing more.

Read the header comments in the file. It says who wrote it.

Re: Re: Questions, questions, questions!
 

What info? The info Mark confirmed. Lots of it. Getting held back. Thought you seen his post?

The ECM is realtime programming. So yeah, GM still does it.
If you are referring to a PROM emulator then that is a different matter. They have been around for years.
All of the DIY PROM emulators are marginal at best. They are hobbyist circuits that do not always follow good design practices. That statement may offend some people, but it is true. If you were to ask for some real documentation on design equations and specs you would find that the product should come with a warning like "only use in vehicles equiped with an airbag."

Who cares about GM's PROM emulator. Like I said, PROM emulators have been around for years. It is just that car people were to cheap to buy them until cheaper hobbyist PROM things (not real emulators) were available.

There is no information to hold back. When you buy a PROM and ECM you get all the info there is. What could they do to the aftermarket companies. Would Holley go after a company for making float bowls for "their" carbs?

When you buy a PROM would can do anything you want to it including figuring out how it works and changing. It only becomes a problem if you try to sell it.
Protecting what source?? You have the PROM, so no, there is no protection. If it was encoded, then yes, it would be protected. But look how that faired for GM. Here is a good one........people sell emulators that are used to change code on the fly after figuring out the PROM code. The emulators themself have code built in that is encrypted so no one can figure it out because they *think* they have a trick idea that no one else has ever thought of. Yes, sad but true.

Answers to what? I have never heard of any "hidden" information. There isn't any. When you buy a PROM you have all the info there is.
Overall, given enough time and ambition then it is possible to figure out a thing such as an ECM in under a month depending on the intelligence of the ones working on it and how many are working it. I do not see why anyone would think info was leaked.

Re: Re: Re: Questions, questions, questions!
 

No I haven't seen his post. What is the title and I will search for it. Interesting, what is the info Mark confirmed?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Questions, questions, questions!
 

It's in this thread, about 5 post up. I don't think anyone is willing to come out and say what mark and I know. Well, what I *think* I know. It's just not going to be open for public discussion, I guess..

I have no idea what you guys think you know to be true. Yes, do not post if it is just hear-say.

I did read through the posts and Grumpy had some good things to say. I think I am starting to get off topic so I all going to stop writing to this post. A timeline would be cool. I think you documenting how things went is a good idea.

J

I'll just put it like this. It's really hard to get a solid timeline of dates, events and names on something that quite possibly could still be on the frayed edges of legality. There are interests to protect. I have no idea what they are though. Mark's initial comment a few post up does give one a general indicaction of what has transpired.

I have all the info I need in front of me to know that it was leaked (or obtained from another source). In the PCM hack there is thorough comments in the cal. section but seemingly NO comments in the hacs aside from the addresses alreay given in the ALDL list. I origionally thought reversing this would be nothing more then tieing the loose ends together and putting a bow on top but instead I have to do all the work:mad: :p. Oh well. Hopefully itll be done by spring so I can use the car again...

This isnt to put down the origional hacker. Any information is extremly valuable and they did a darn good job on whats there.


As far as all the info being there. Its not. Its in some fat, retired engineers head, whose probably at this moment sitting in his briefs drinking miller light while watching wheel of furtune.:) Its a loose assortment of hexadecimal values on a prom with little indication of what anything is or what the logic algorithms are.

Competitive advantage. (Again, just to be clear in case the reader didn't read my last reply - I'm not one of them).

What are you talking about? That's like saying buying if you have a bare PC and en executable file you have everything you need to program a computer.

We've come a long way with reverse engineering and have most of what we need, but there are still a number of holes to fill.

Others have filled those holes for themselves (as can be seen in products available in the wild) but are not sharing.

And I'm not suggesting these folks are DIY'ers. Just suggesting that there is straight-from-GM information that is out there.

I guess people don't want to share (for free) what they paid for. That's what it seems like to me. Cause there is no "in house" GM documentation in the public's eye.....

I don't think the information was "paid for" outside of a few beers and maybe dinner.

Anyway, let's get back on topic.

I think there may be some info actually in the prom from the engineers. If you open in a hex editor you may see the actual text. Its for calibration of some sort. Id speculate that thats how the terms SAM and BLM came about. They where actual terms used by GM.

The BUA hac. Where did it come from? I didn't see any names on it, just dates. The first one I find is 08/85 . Then it comments later than XXX portion was disassembled 02-05-95. Next date down is from 94. Looking at the bpw vs load table section, it was disassembled on 7-22-89. Was the dates a way to fudge up a GM doc, in order to cover things? If not, then it was a work in progress spanning from 89-95 (at least).

So you don't think the aftermarket chip companies used the same information? If they didn't pay for it then somebody got screwed.

That is always the way. You think that other people are doing the stuff for the fun of it like you are. Then soon after, they market it to try and make a buck. Seen this a few times happen and it doesn't seem right. People start out with good intentions and get lost along the way. Very sad.

I was thinking about the ANHT hac for the author. Not sure about the hac you are talking about.

Notice that the Ludis schematic does not have most of the caps and resistors labeled. A sign of no external input.

Notice that the ANHT has has a few section where the $4002 register is described as the PRP direction register and the code does not match the comments. This isn't a simple spelling mistake, it is a big logical difference. Looks like no external input to me. Just a guess, but it looks like it was all figured out without a manufacturers help.

I am really hoping that if I say something dumb enough, then one of the original DIY'ers that lurk will jump in and explain it properly.


No, in that case you probably have everything you need for the computer to operate. To program it, you need to know what is inside.

There are Motorola dissassemblers, prom readers, coding books, logic analyzers, voltmeters, etc. The only thing missing is intelligence and ambition. Only few will use the above tools and figure things out. Yes, it would be EASIER to have the designers explicity say how it works, but it is not necessary.

Obviously not all of it came from GM, but there are some obvious tid-bits dropped here and there. Most was likely furnished by DIY'ers.

Well, I have multiple sources telling me there was a leak from GM. Bits of that information was used to help the diy movement. From what I understand, there is GM documentation out there and people have seen it. Like I said, getting someone to talk about such matters is not likely.

LG4 Article

Pages 2&3 are out of sequence and they're a little hard to read. I can zip them up and post them to Craigs site if its a problem.

LG4 article
 

Looks to me like a product developed because of lack of information from GM. The spark was obviously being pulled and the best way to correct it was to intercept and modify the output to put the advance back where it was needed.
If information was available as to the exact operation or how to change it, it would have been changed in the programming right then. Especially for an aftermarket company with only dollars to gain by such a performance product in the early stages of the "black box" market.
No need to make the "intercepter" like was done.
There may have been info leaked on how ESC worked or just gained from manuals on the system, but nothing as to how it could be changed. I'd say it was just a good bit of improvisation to get the result desired.

I found something very interesting in that article. THe single quote, " Besides, GM has let it be known they don't like people messing around inside their computers" . I really wish that I knew what they ment exactly.