Who wants a custom ECM calibration?

[Shel-Game]

Don't get me wrong - it's not a secret. But, I got the warning bot here on TD for a post I made on "another" mopar/turbo related site. I don't want to get banned or the dreaded miserable user hack, that's all. The info is out there. It's just not all right here on TD.com...

I'd be more than happy to post direct links to the stock and modifed binaries and dis-assemblies I've posted. But, the links would get blocked, and I can't post them here also - there's no "respository" like we have on T - M . c o m



Oh, I'm sure I'll get the bot for that...

[Tim_K]

Another question - I've seen things here saying that someone has to volunteer their car to go and have the calibrations made on it.

The people who are going to be making it are running some sort of company, even if it's a small company. Why can't THEY go buy an old Plymouth Acclaim or something with a 3.0 in it and make it their test car? A few hundred bucks for an old beater, and it's done.

And so far I haven't seen any responses to my idea of just making MegaSquirt THE standard aftermarket ECU for our 3.0's, and writing calibrations for it, which would probably be easier. And far more tuneable.

[lookin]

And people wonder why we can't get anyone to make us a CAL.

[lookin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim_K Another question - I've seen things here saying that someone has to volunteer their car to go and have the calibrations made on it. The people who are going to be making it are running some sort of company, even if it's a small company. Why can't THEY go buy an old Plymouth Acclaim or something with a 3.0 in it and make it their test car? A few hundred bucks for an old beater, and it's done.

Maybe they need to see some sort of commitment, from 3.0 people as a group, before they invest all the money on development.

They may perceive our inability to find anyone willing to lend them a 3.0, in decent shape able to serve adequately as a test platform, as confirmation of what a bunch of cheapskates we are.

They probably figure most of us would be too cheap to buy a CAL at a fair price. So why should they invest time and money to develop one for us?

[dodgeshadowchik]

I'd be more than willing to let someone use my 3.0L, as when it comes to tuning and computers.... I really don't know all that much. I'd just have to get the car back together.

[lookin]

They would need it for at least two months, and yes you would get it back all put together. I would have let them use my van, but we don't have another car.

Just email Chris at TU, he posted back a page or two, and tell him if you can still do it.

By the way dodgeshadowchik, thanks for considering doing this.

[irocelectric93]

Making megasquirt the aftermarket ecu for our engines would completely defeat the purpose of a cal. A cal is plug and play....megasquirt isnt.

[mwinkle353]

9 years later and we're still back where we started from.

[lookin]

Not necessarily. If someone would lend TU a car, for a couple of months, Chris said they may just get to it. His concern is software protection, and now there are ways to lock software, so it can't be read or copied.

So we may just be in business.

[90TurboVan]

Chis doesn't want to do 3.0 cals. That's all there is to it. He could have bought a beater/scrap 3.0 car for $100 and done whatever testing he wanted to, but he has not. TU doesn't see the 3.0 community as a large customer base, and you can't blame them, there really aren't that many of you that want cals compared to the number of turbo four cylinder people. There is no way that he could lock the memory on an ECU so that no one could just pop out the EEPROM and pull all the info off of it. There is no way to do that. Someone just needs to start disassembling the 3.0 cal and figure out what everything does. It's been done for many of the turbo cals, so it's possible. I'd do it, but I don't have any use for a 3.0 cal... Anyone tried getting in touch with Derek to see what work he has done?

[lookin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 90TurboVan Chis doesn't want to do 3.0 cals. That's all there is to it. He could have bought a beater/scrap 3.0 car for $100 and done whatever testing he wanted to, but he has not. TU doesn't see the 3.0 community as a large customer base, and you can't blame them, there really aren't that many of you that want cals compared to the number of turbo four cylinder people. There is no way that he could lock the memory on an ECU so that no one could just pop out the EEPROM and pull all the info off of it. There is no way to do that. Someone just needs to start disassembling the 3.0 cal and figure out what everything does. It's been done for many of the turbo cals, so it's possible. I'd do it, but I don't have any use for a 3.0 cal... Anyone tried getting in touch with Derek to see what work he has done?

I have to disagree with all of that, and I know for a fact that, there most certainly is a hardware software combination, that can lock out reverse engineers and copycats alike.

Chris is just waiting for us to demonstrate some commitment. I don't blame him either. We need to stop making excuses and passing the buck.

See my next post quoting Chris.

[lookin]

Quote:Originally Posted by c2xejk
"Chris,

What kind of time frame are we talking about? What year controller are we talking about?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris W That all depends how long it takes to get a test vehicle and how busy my calibrations technician is once he has access to one. It's up to you guys to start the ball rolling. Let me know when you have a MI volunteer. Any year. Thanks! Chris-TU

See what I mean? It is all up to us.

[90TurboVan]

Doesn't change the fact that these 3.0 cars are plentiful and cheap. I'm just saying that 3.0 cals are definitly not a priority for the TD vendors. There is absolutely no way to code protect these computers. Their architecture does not allow it. It could be done with internal memory on a microcontroller, but not with the expanded bus configuration that Chrysler uses. It relies on an external memory chip to store everything, using a standard interface which has no provisions for code protection. I'm sure Chris would do it if he had a free test vehicle and no other calibration work to do, but he's not going to do anything unless he has nothing to lose.

The other problem is that once TU gets the 3.0 computer cracked, they won't release any information. FWD won't even tell me what factory cal they based their own cals off of. I'm sure TU won't be any different.

lookin, I know you said your friend has a lot of experience with electronics/mcu's, if cracking a 3.0 computer is something she'd want to do, PM me and I'll give you everything I've learned and the tools I use for turbo SBEC's, which should transfer to the V6 SBEC's.

[Ondonti]

Easy to agree about the cheap car thing.


The logic of protecting the investment doesnt work though. There is no security on TD cals so whats the dif????

[lookin]

Hi 90TurboVan

Chris said, he would build us a new plug 'n play replacement ECU. Since it will have current board and component sets. It could be locked with no problem.

Of course they don't want to hand over their hard work and investment, and yes we would have to buy their product. But that's great though. We would have plug 'n play replacement ECUs! Yeah baby! For those who want to to make changes, and experiment, there is always MS right?

Thanks for your generous offer, but Dy said she can't get involved now. She is designing and building, a touch screen, all band ham radio right now, that will make Yaesu and Icom jealous, and she is doing it all in her spare time. You should see it! It's so tiny and yet powerful. She is amazing my gal Dy is.

Chris said he will do it. We have to show him we mean business though. It is all up to us.