jxx wrote:
hence the comment earlier that something as simple as a dash cluster failure should not cripple a vehicle... been going on here since turn of the century and there's only a few people/companies that can overcome it and they charge like wounded bulls.
Eg: you have to have a compatible scantool or such and pay an exorbitant fee for online access to be able to reprogram their shit, most people with a 20 year old car don't want to pay that for a mobile auto elec/mechanic to come and move the pos out of their driveway, bill is more than the car is worth.
It is simply insane to me that as consumers we have let this go on for so long. The sad part is that even the automotive industry is broken when it comes to RTR. The go-to example of working RTR is automotive.
Another sad truth about this which is most of the stuff I work on is older than 2018 is gone are the days of EEPROMs/ flash on the circuit board in a lot of cases. I have run into newer stuff that just has all the flash or EEPROM on the MCU die. So no easy clone of the old BCM/cluster by swapping out the EEPROM.
Before PCM hammer came out people used to make ok money "cloning" PCMs by swapping the flash on them.
What really sucks is a lot of these toolchains like PCM Hammer, LS Droid, FoCCCus, and others really have to worry about copyright law. You know either right to repair really should have some exemptions in place for copyright law or an update to DCMA. If GM really wanted to put their foot down some of the repositories of dumps could be fucked. A flip of a switch and a whole community gone because of dumbass overreaching copyright law.
I mean how many of the OBD STAR and Xtool BS toolchains are just reverse-engineered from the original tools? Some of these ripped tools are getting expensive because the original is so expensive. How much are clone Tech 2s? $300 still right? its almost 30 year old tech.
Edit: sorry slightly off topic rant.