Good find, Redrotor. From what I could gather, he is doing what we are talking about. Right at the end it says something about "8-bit".

If I could only read Japanese...

 

I work with millions of dollars of software, hardware and programmers that could do this task...
I still bought a PFC - you guys are nuts if you think it is worth the effort. Even though M2/Pettit is doing this sort of upgrade they are hardly rolling in dough.

This whole thing sounds like a "digital duct tape" modification.
Who is going to test it out on their engine at a $2k-$3K risk?

 

It is worth the effort if you enjoy doing it...

 

OOPS. Looks like that "8-bit" reference is for the serial port...

 

The 64 pin microcontroller (good luck figuring out exactly what it is....I spent considerable time and effort attempting this, and failed. Of course, feel free to make me feel stupid and if you're successful, pass on the info! The ones I have seen were not marked in any way that told me what they were however) and the 18 pin EPROM are both removed and socketed. A new EPROM is burned and put in the 18-pin socket. The 64-pin controller is NOT replaced, but a daughter board is plugged into the socket from which it came. This daughter board in turn has a pair (one 64 pin, one 18 pin) of sockets and some address decoding logic on it. The controller goes in the big socket, another EPROM goes in the little one. The new external EPROM is burned with data that replaces info that is in the controller's internal ROM...fuel maps, stuff like that. The address decoding logic causes the controller to pull data out of external EPROM rather than internal ROM for particular address ranges.

There would really be no point to rewriting code for this controller even if you did figure out which one it was. It would be nice to know the memory locations of all the maps, etc...then you could perform the Pettit/M2/whatever mod yourself. Someone mentioned creating some kind of emulator to cable over to the ECU controller socket...that would be a huge effort, and again unless you're purely into it for sport, not nearly worth the effort. Better and more elegant solutions already exist.

jds

 

You're right. After a LOT of effort, I would still be left with a modified 8-bit control system.

It would be cheaper and a better solution to get the PowerFC and learn that really well.

 

HC6811 or something like that is a number I remember for the CPU of the ECU. However, I am not sure if that was from an FD or FC turbo. Or if it is even correct, but anyway, that's what I remember.

The PowerFC is good. It makes the car run smoother than the stock 8-bit ECU. And with the Datalogit you can set all kinds of params and do datalogging with a laptop.

-Max

 

A buddy of mine said that you can buy a eprom burner in ebay with software for about $40. If hes right or not I just dont know. If you can get a hold of an already programmed eprom (someone already figured the code)all you have to do is make a mirror image on your computers hard drive and buy a eprom at Radio Shack ,burned (just like a cd-r) and presto.
The trick part for some people would be to remove the factory eprom from the ECU, solder a eprom carrier; all without damaging the ECU board and then installing the eprom you just copied on the (IC) carrier, samething Tuners do with your ECU. They charge you their research and development , You know people pay big bucks for their re-chipped ECUs. Kind of like Playstation games and back up copies. A cd is only worth pennies but they charge you 49.99 for their programmers and marketing.
It is possible to do this, people are doing it with other cars,game consoles and cable boxes but i do not , I DO NOT recomend copiyng someone elses copyrighted material for their own financial benefit. So unless you want a $600per hour geek to trow your a$$ in jail, do not try this at home.

 

When the program is burned to eprom (depending on the microcontroller), it is typical to have the option of locking the program to make it unreadable. I'd be awfully surprised if the programmer didn't select this choice.

 

It's my understanding the daughter board on m2's ecu's is part of the encryption to protect the map. You cant just copy these suckers.

 

" We are men hunted by those 2 terrible words... what if?"
--Morlock
Time Machine

 

Max,

The CPU on the FD is definitely not an HC11...don't know about the FC.

jds

 

Read my post first post in this thread, or posts by Bill B...there is extra hardware involved in "re-chipping" an FD, and I'm not talking about the socket.

jds

 

Unless M2 has changed what they are doing over the past couple of years, that is NOT true for the FD. It seems there was some kind of device like this for the FC, since otherwise the "re-chipping" mod was just that...a new chip. I suppose the need for the daughter board to replace internal ROM on the FD made this kind of protection superflous.

jds

 

I was talking to Rusty at Rotary Performance about programming my ECU and he was telling me that they do the programming on the stock board and chips. They charge $800 to program the ECU so they must know something Pettit/M2 doesn't (or just have jacked up prices). Can someone who has the RP ECU verify this?

Also this seem the right place to ask this question, does anyone here know abt directv test cards, how to program them, and what kind of equipment is required?

 

So is there a source for this "daughter board" so one can start experimenting with different fuel and timing maps ?

:-) neil