jamesbob02

I dont have a serial connection on my laptop, but I do have USB's and a printer port. I ordered a USB-to-serial adapter but I'd also like to know if its possible to use a simple 25-pin to 9-pin adapter and use my printer port?? Just seems like another serial port to me, just different number of pins. Thanks.

shaggy56

The problem is getting the software to look for the stream on that port. Im sure something could be created in visual basic. Ive seen software that allows you to control your parallel port data stream.

Denis.V

Where did you order a USB to serial adapter and how much?

Thanks,


Denis V.

jamesbob02

I've done a little more research, and apparently it's been asked before but its basically impossible using the standard diagram for the cable now, because the data transferring is different or something, I dont know. It's not as simple as using a 9 to 25-pin adapter, though.

I got my usb to serial adapter from www.sewelldev.com, it cost like 20 bucks I think. I haven't gotten to try it yet, but apparently there are issues getting any USB to Serial adapters to work with WinXP. I'll tell you how it works out for me or come asking for questions lol. If you use Win98, it's supposed to work pretty well. We'll see how it works out.

B4Ctom1

ever have any luck?

jamesbob02

Found out that a data converter is required, bought one from AKMcables.com and put it together, didnt work, sent it back, he sent it back friday so I should get it back soon and will try to get it to work.

B4Ctom1

I just noticed there are a pile of serial PCMCIA cards on ebay for cheap, just makle sure3 that the one you get has the "dongle" and drivers. I saw alot there that show a picture of one that say they dont include it in the text. I am about a hair away from buying one. you can assign a com port to it, I prey this is the solution.

jamesbob02

I believe that my adapter will work - there are some positive signs. I may have to use Win98 to get it to work right. I'll know within a few days.

B4Ctom1

I dont have enough other stuff on m,y computer yet to cause problems maybe because the program seems to run ok on my two computers with XP

jamesbob02

Which program are you using and what do you mean by it works fine? All of them open up for me, but I havent been able to hook up to the car yet.

B4Ctom1

yeah opens like you said the moates program

jamesbob02

Well I got my converter back last week and tried it out, but still didn't get anything. I know it works, though. I downloaded ALDLtest from TTS Powersystems (the guys who make Datamaster) a while back and some tests were positive, but since I sent it to AKM and had Andrew tinker with it, it now passes all the tests. I hooked it up to my car but didn't get anything to work. Datamaster said that the converter was working but that the ECM was not found. I couldn't get Freescan to work, nor Moates.

What should I try? I'm pretty sure the problem is past the converter, because all signs are that it is working fine and the computer is not having a conflict with it at all. I'm wondering if there's a problem at the ALDL connector itself. It looks all hooked up just fine.

In fact, I'd like to know what color wires I should be seeing, just to know if they're hooking up to the ECM correctly. I've got a 92 TPI 350, so I'm using terminal A as the ground, and terminal M (right below A) as the data terminal, correct? What color wires should they be behind the connector? I'm not supposed to be using the 10ohm resistor to terminal B, right?, because of which TPI system I have? Thanks.

B4Ctom1

whats next is for you to buy the $46 PCMCIA serial card (make sure to get one with the "dongle") a COM port can be assigned to the serial port so its likely to read just fine.

jamesbob02

With all respect, I really don't think its necessary. The laptop seems to be connecting just fine through the converter, its just not seeing the ECM. ALDLtest passes, hyperterminal test passes, it has a strictly assigned COM port, there are no IR devices or anything, it all just seems to work fine. Just won't connect to the ECM.

B4Ctom1

my prob on laptop #2 is the IR port I think, my laptop #1 dont work because it has no serial. laptop #3 worked fine it is a old packard bell diplomat with 75 mhz prosessor (0.75 speed processor for you youngsters). only problem is #3 is borrowed and has no battery. So I am back to making it work with laptop #1 that means I will be trying a PCMCIA serial card soon.

jamesbob02

My laptop doesnt have a serial port either, but I'm using a USB to serial adapter, like I said, that seems to be working.

And I think you mean your #2 is 0.075 (for the youngsters) instead of 0.75 !!

B4Ctom1

lol yeah it would be holy crap im old

jamesbob02

lol me too (kinda). My first was about a .033 lol.

BTW, whats with the avatar pic and the gun?

86iroctpi

I have an USB to serial adapter that I no longer use if anyone needs one. You can also get them at Comp USA. I had to use it on my previous laptop with my aldl cable. I also had a hard time to get Datamaster to communicate with the ECM. I can't remember exactly what I did to make it work, but I think I had to change the way on of the USB ports was configured. I actualy had to have someone else to do it, becuse I couldn't figure it out my self. My new laptop has a serial connection on it, so I don't need the adapter anymore.

Send me an e-mail if interested in the adapter.

B4Ctom1

ok so I got a serial PCMCIA card and something is happening now but its still not making sence of the data its getting now this is actually two pictures in one the "digits" in the second view of the moates is what I get now and they scroll to different values the whole time or every time I hit "1"



I think its my settings but I dont understand how to make these settings to help this communicate yes the moates is set on com3 also.

jamesbob02

I got both results with the Moates software, and used the exact same port settings. Nothing. Nada.

I got a suggestion from a guy that's had similar problems, it involves wiring in another resistor into the AKM232 converter. I'm going to try it but won't be able to for a couple days at least.

I'm also picking up an old 200mhz Win98 computer this weekend that I know will get rid of any problems I'm having using a XP computer and a USB adapter. If it still doesnt work I'll know the problem is in the cable or the car.

B4Ctom1

yeah I was able to get it to scan as I said earlier with the friends computer but it is not mobile nor is it mine so Im screwed there too, but atleast I know the cable and car work fine.

I tried setting the baud on both at 7200 and hit the "1" a bunch of times once or twice it actually displayed the #4 data screen but the data was mostly zeros and not moving.

jamesbob02

I'm pretty much giving up on trying to get it to work on my too-new laptop. I'm getting the old 200mhz-er from my sister who doesnt use it anymore. I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that I can get it to work with it. People have said there's just too many things to go wrong with trying to get it to work on a PC like this, and now I've learned it. Good luck getting yours to work.....I'll tell you how my efforts go early next week.

B4Ctom1

well computer #2 was one of those but it had an IR port and no spot in the bios or device manager to rectify or disable it

Kingtal0n

well at least im not the only one with serial port woes.

I work at best buy, we sell the USB -> serial thing
we also sell a docking station USB -> serial on it
we also sell a Parallel -> Serial adapter


NONE OF THEM WORKED FOR ME!!!

I tried them all, even the $100 docking station, with my commander 950 ecu, and it wouldnt find the ECU for ding.

and just for the heck of it, i hooked it to my serial PDA, and it worked perfectly fine...

somthing about ECUS and Serial ports just doesnt freaking work right..

The solution for me now? Im going to buy a new laptop with a serial port. I know, tough break, but i cant keep using this POS toshiba from 1987... no battery! everytime the car dies, the laptop dies and i lose my datafeed..

Heck one time i got stranded because the car died right while i was sending data to the ECU, so the laptop died with the car and there wasnt any data in the ECU so it wouldnt start my car!

B4Ctom1

tell me about the PDA thing? a serial port on a PDA? what kind? could it store some scans? could they be transferred to a laptop?

Kingtal0n

lol tom... its just an older PDA with a serial port.

it stores whatever you want, pictures games whatever, as long as the palm operating system can read it.

i dont even have the thing anymore, i let my friend barrow it for school because i never use it.

if you hook it to a computer through a serial port it could store whatever you wanted like i said,

HOWEVER,

if your trying to move files and scans and the like from computer to computer easiest way is burn a CD...

or get one of those USB drives that hold 128-256 memory.. they are on sale now at best buy for under $30 nowadays.

B4Ctom1

lol is my desperation showing? I have a completed car with tons of potential and Im only seeing a bit of it.

It makes me crazy because before I can even "learn" how to "properly" scan and burn I need to get past this point and I keep spending money and Im getting no where

I still have the racecar to do too, Im staring down the barrel of needing to make a chip and/or do a 749 on it. I knew the process would take a long time but I didnt think it would be the "making a connection" part. I am determined!

Kingtal0n

Im sort of in the same situation. i need to tune my car still, and i just made this awsome self-tuning program that will basically do all the tuning i need without me ever touching the laptop while i drive, but i still dont have a laptop that can run it with a serial port.

its driving me nuts too.

B4Ctom1

I first got a serial to USB cable and tried it drivers installed and all, the device manager saw it as a "human interface device". In the device manager I could see that there was not even a com port assigned to it. it wasnt even on the LPT/com part of the ladder. I tried it anyhow with the cable and it showed no connection and when you hit the "1" to try to re-establish a connection it did nothing what so ever.

well now I have a "socket" brand PCMCIA card. I got one with the single serial port and the "ruggedized" (non removable) RS-232 plug instead of the removable dongle. In the documentation from socket they mention a way for MS-dos programmers to have thier device be useful to them. I think this could help me but I just dont know enough about what Im reading;

"Appendix B Setup for MS-DOS
An enabler for MS-DOS is available for programmers and developers. This
appendix briefly describes how to set up the hardware and software on a
notebook computer running MS-DOS. Please contact Socket technical"

There is more and I will put the documentation up to allow those of you in the same boat to consider if this product could be useful to you. this was on page 26

I still feel that now that I can see some data coming from the ECM to the laptop that it is doing it's job I just dont have some simple setting correct. If we can overcome this we can put this problem to bed for me and others.

Serial I/O

jamesbob02

KingTal0n,
What's this you say about a program that does auto-tuning? Mind telling a bit more?

Kingtal0n

first off, <b>"Appendix B Setup for MS-DOS
An enabler for MS-DOS is available for programmers and developers. This
appendix briefly describes how to set up the hardware and software on a
notebook computer running MS-DOS. Please contact Socket technical"
</b>

thats just letting you know there are 16-bit hardware drivers that you can use with MS-DOS if you dont have windows. its backwards compatible, in other words.

Serial ports are 1 - bit at a time transfer rates... thats why they are so slow. even a parallel port is 8 bits at once, compared to slow serial. if you are getting actual DATA from the port, not just useless garbage, then it could be setting related, then again it could be driver related. did you use the drivers it came with ? windows is a funny thing when it comes to backwards compatibility, and dont fool yourself thats what your doing, using an emulated 32 software bit device to control a 16-bit piece of hardware, if that. thats why they never seem to work... there is such a fine line for error that each application of usage for one of these things is different. i may get it working with my PDA but not my ECU... sure i may get data from the port (there is only 1 place to pull data from...) but it wont be of any use unless i can split it up and figure out which bits are which, then i need the piece of software to work with this 32-bit driver and make sense out of the data we are getting.

Im no serial port genius, or i could have gotten my stupid docking station to work. from my knowledge the only options you have for the thing that may be of any use at all are constants that you may be able to reset from the driver of the device itself. what kind of drivers did it come with? maybe there is a .ini file or somthing you can change input/output settings on?

as for MY program, it works with the commander 950 ECU to automatically change the fuel map values based on how rich or lean your motor is running, so you dont have to do diddly except drive around and check the data feed every once in a while.

B4Ctom1

yeah I used the supplied drivers because xp didnt even have a set for this card. I cant help but think that if a serial port on my computer pcmcia card or usb related type cant draw this simple data how in the world does anyone get this stuff to work with complicated serial data devices?

B4Ctom1

I tried making the baud rates match but to no success.

jamesbob02

Update:

I got that old computer from my sister. Formatted it, installed Win98, disabled the IR port, and used ALDLtest. It failed on every account. It worked in Hyperterminal, though. I didn't think it would work, but for the hell of it I hooked it up to the car and ran Datamaster....it WORKED! So cool.... I think the difference is the direct com port instead of a usb adapter. I also got it to work in Moates, even within Win98, but I couldnt get CarBytes to work at all, and Freescan only worked when I hit "Force Data", so I had to keep clicking to get more data - sucked. The data I'm getting from Moates is really helpful, but I can't get Panalyzer to work, it just crashes when I try to load a run, so I haven't been able to do much analyzing yet.

B4Ctom1

I was able to make my friend's antique 75Mhz 486 laptop scan using moates, but its impractical because:
[list=1][*]its not mine[*]it has no battery (they are over $150)[*]its so old there is no way for me to get the data from it to my other computer due to the drive is the only I/O device and it is unreliably skiddish[/list=1]
atleast it confimed the cable and ALDL were not the problem

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

Either get a power inverter and power cord or most laptops will run with the power connection wired straight into the car’s 12V (and charge when the engine is running, but you might want to consider filtering the line with a capacitor if you leave it plugged in during start up).

WRT to the drive… do you have a compact flash card (look in your digicam…)? With a drive adaptor (used to get them for free with sandisk cards) for it you can use it as a hard drive in the PCMCIA slot… If you’re ambitious I know someone that built an IDE adaptor so that he can plug it in as the harddrive that the machine boots off of. That’s fast, will work in most laptops and is easily movable.

B4Ctom1

I had to give it back to him so he can use it for his DFI


[QUOTE}WRT to the drive… do you have a compact flash card (look in your digicam…)? With a drive adaptor (used to get them for free with sandisk cards) for it you can use it as a hard drive in the PCMCIA slot… If you’re ambitious I know someone that built an IDE adaptor so that he can plug it in as the harddrive that the machine boots off of. That’s fast, will work in most laptops and is easily movable. [/QUOTE]

His is so old there are no ethernet or USB holes in it lol

but keep the help coming, did you look at the pictures of the serial port sttings? do you know about this stuff?

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

Have you tried setting your port speed to 7200?

B4Ctom1

I tried setting them both to that 8000 and something and both with 7200 and just the computer on 7200 with the moates at the 8000 and something (whatever it is) an all I got is what is seen here:

Denis.V

Checksum: 0/64 = You've a datastream incompatible with the datacalculation included into C. Moates software.

What is your package?:

1.- Engine (V6, V8,...)?
2.- Year?
3.- ECM (730, 165,...)?
4.- Mask ($8d, $88,...)?
5.- EGR (digital or not)?
6.- VIN?

If datastreams are incompatibles, you will see "no link" for ever.


Denis V.

B4Ctom1

I can tell you that throughout this process I have been doing this with the stock chip in place with the ECM untouched. a couple days ago I went in and made my first chip, turned off the EGR flag, changed fan temps, lockup speeds, and injector constant. Nothing has changed though. the car is my 92 B4C.

1 V8
2 1992
3 730
4 I dont know enough to know what masks are yet (its stock)
5 EGR (what ever it is stock) - flag off now
6 vin? sure 1G1FP2383NL155837

Kingtal0n

<b>Either get a power inverter and power cord or most laptops will run with the power connection wired straight into the car’s 12V (and charge when the engine is running, but you might want to consider filtering the line with a capacitor if you leave it plugged in during start up). </b>

B4Ctom, Jamesbob, and Crossfire...

whatever you do, dont use a laptop without a battery in the car running off the inverter.

Oh yeah, sure it may work for a little while but...

I've already had some serious data corruption simply because the laptop would flip out mid-stream if the voltage dropped below 13.5~ (like at lights or stops)..

I also had it strand me once, car died mid-stream of sending data to the ECU... Laptop cant run without car running so IT died, leaving me with a half-full ECU and unable to start the car so i could start the laptop and re-send the data

and on top of all that, it seems the power coming from the inverter is very dirty. the laptop doesnt really like it... i force it to work though. but it gives me all sorts of weird power related problems. suddenly the LCD will go black or suddenly ill get a weird freeze spot if the voltage dips.

Im spending the $1300 this weekend and getting myself an HP with a serial port so i can actually use the correct tool to dial in my car. no more screwing around with laptops made before the car was made.

B4Ctom1

I never imagined my brand new laptop would have come without one.

Denis.V

Hum, that is:

In your web site you have your own reply: "Only about 589 of these cars were made".

Since this car is a rare model, probably it has a rare/different datastream. Be patient about this:

More information for datastream identification:

1.- It's TBI, TPI, MPFI?
2.- 5.0 or 5.7?.


Denis V.

B4Ctom1

I never turn down help, I come to DIY prom because everyone here knows pretty much way more than I do.

in light of new information, i have a very rare datastream for sale, accepting offers...

ok on a serious note it is a 350, in case you are cstill curious it is a TPI. if it helps think of it as a 92 Z28 because there is really no difference same 730 ECM, same harness, same 350, same TPI, same data stream. it did scan fine, on my friends old 75 mhz processor. it has no battery and I had to give it back to him.

Denis.V

Well, don't sells your car:

DATA STREAM A100
USAGE:
5.0 PFI (LB9) (VIN=F) 90, 91,92
5.7 PFI (L98) (VIN=8) 90, 91,92

No problem whit this. Is not a rare data stream.

B4Ctom1

ok whats that mean?

jamesbob02

He means there's no reason for you to have a rare datastream. It's pretty much impossible. Bottom line, you have a TPI with a 730 ecm. The problem lies elsewhere.

B4Ctom1

thats what I figured from the beginning. I was just afraid to say even though he took it on a strange tangent because I am so desperate for help.