Hello, My name is Nathan Parks and I'm new to the forum but have been lurking for a decade +. I started out in the early 2000s soldering chips into P28 Honda ECUs to use Uberdata and Crome Pro along with EEPROM programmers. I've also donated tons of money to Moates.net over the years by buying their equipment and I still have one of their stickers on my truck that has been there for 10+ years. I'm telling you all this so you don't think I'm some uneducated newb unwilling to use the search feature.
I've recently had a passion for tinkering reignited over the last year in the General Motors market. I drive a 2007 Tahoe with a e38 PCM that I've been tinkering with using HP Tuners and EFI Live. I currently own an EFI Live Flash Scan V2, HPTuners MPVI2, VXDiag Nano and OBDLink MX+. A buddy of mine has a 2003 Silverado he swapped a 5.3 into with a P59 PCM and asked for me to enable E-Fans and tune it for him. I obliged but also immediately went to the web to see if there were any DIY solutions that are cheaper than the $50 x2 credit fee HP Tuners charges. Needless to say, I've been awake for days sifting through all this convoluted information amazed at how unorganized it all seems to be.
So, with that being said, could someone please answer the following questions.
1. When it comes to bin files from 1mb PCM's, I can't find any 100% completed XDF's that I'm willing to use to edit the bin file. I'm currently using LS Droid to pull the bin file from the PCM and opening them in TunerPro RT. Would it be possible to flash the PCM with HP Tuners or EFI Live and only change (1) parameter at a time and then compare it to a bone stock bin to start mapping out changes to make an XDF file? To me, this sounds time-consuming but I'm willing to give a go.
2. Are there any good tutorials or YouTube videos that show exactly how one sifts through the raw hex to even create the roadmap? I've literally have no clue where to start and only have coding experience with HTML.
3. Would I be wasting my time if I purchased a domain and built a WordPress site to try and help organize all the bin files and XDFs floating around on multiple sites? Can I even legally do this in regards to GM possibly having restrictions on people hosting their BIN files?
4. Is this scene still alive? Honest question, especially with standalone systems like Holley coming out with the Terminator X that has a built-in wideband feature for under $1000. I see LS Droid and other tools are relatively new but I feel I'm too new in this GM world to honestly know.
Multiple Questions
Re: Multiple Questions
1) What you propose would work. If you can keep the XDF in text format that would be greatly preferable, partly because revision-control and file-comparison tools work much better with text than with binary. And that will make it easier for more people to collaborate on adding parameters and tables to the same XDFs.
Also because the text format keeps the door open for ingesting the XDF's data into other tuning tools. I'm working on a way to convert XDFs to the formats used by RomRaider and EcuFlash, for example, and I'm working on my own tuning tool that uses the EcuFlash format (my app has a long way to go... but I'm chipping away at it).
2) I don't know, but it's worth searching to see what turns up. Until recently I was only active in the Subaru world, and I used IDA Pro to find tables in those .bin files. (IDA is expensive... I used a hacked version for a little while then bought a legit copy when I was confident that I was actually going to get stuff done with it.) There is a pretty steep learning curve to that approach. It starts with understanding what assembly language is (search about that topic), and then the specific assembly language of the CPU in the PCM (it's a Motorola 68332, which is mostly a 68000-series CPU, and there's quite a bit of reference material available for those), and a lot of hours of staring at code, trying to figure out what it does, and sometimes succeeding.
I started reverse engineering the OS in my Corvette, here...
https://github.com/LegacyNsfw/12593358
...but mostly it's just annotations based on an XDF from cmaje (another user here). That project does lay the groundwork for more investigation though if / when questions come up about how specific features of the PCM work.
3) I'd really like to see the XDF files hosted on GitHub for the sake of collaboration and revision control. And if the XDFs are there, I think it makes sense to keep bin files right next to them. There's another thread here about getting such a GitHub repository started.
Technically speaking, GM owns the copyright to the bin files, but on the other hand, they're only useful to GM customers, by which I mean anyone who has bought a GM PCM (even used). I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that buying a PCM gives anyone a license to use the corresponding bin files for that PCM, I mean you get a bin file included in every PCM you buy at a junk yard and you can't use the PCM without it. Plus there are people using ebay to sell PCMs pre-flashed to whatever bin file you need - I've bought a couple that way myself. And if GM isn't going after people who are doing this stuff commercially I don't think they're going to go after GM customers who are just helping other GM customers and not even profiting from it.
4) Reflashing is still the least expensive way to make these engines run with arbitrary upgrades, by far, so I think it's going to remain popular for a long time. Plus it avoids the hassle of integrating an aftermarket ECU with a factory wiring harness. I don't think aftermarket ECUs are going to eclipse reflashing until/unless the price comes down well under $500 with plug-and-play wiring... which might never happen.
I do think we're going to see the price of aftermarket ECUs drop steadily due to the fact that complex custom electronics in general is getting cheaper and more accessible. Stuff like speeduino is slowly but steadily going to be exerting downward pressure on the price tags of stuff from Holley / AEM / Syvecs / etc.
Also because the text format keeps the door open for ingesting the XDF's data into other tuning tools. I'm working on a way to convert XDFs to the formats used by RomRaider and EcuFlash, for example, and I'm working on my own tuning tool that uses the EcuFlash format (my app has a long way to go... but I'm chipping away at it).
2) I don't know, but it's worth searching to see what turns up. Until recently I was only active in the Subaru world, and I used IDA Pro to find tables in those .bin files. (IDA is expensive... I used a hacked version for a little while then bought a legit copy when I was confident that I was actually going to get stuff done with it.) There is a pretty steep learning curve to that approach. It starts with understanding what assembly language is (search about that topic), and then the specific assembly language of the CPU in the PCM (it's a Motorola 68332, which is mostly a 68000-series CPU, and there's quite a bit of reference material available for those), and a lot of hours of staring at code, trying to figure out what it does, and sometimes succeeding.
I started reverse engineering the OS in my Corvette, here...
https://github.com/LegacyNsfw/12593358
...but mostly it's just annotations based on an XDF from cmaje (another user here). That project does lay the groundwork for more investigation though if / when questions come up about how specific features of the PCM work.
3) I'd really like to see the XDF files hosted on GitHub for the sake of collaboration and revision control. And if the XDFs are there, I think it makes sense to keep bin files right next to them. There's another thread here about getting such a GitHub repository started.
Technically speaking, GM owns the copyright to the bin files, but on the other hand, they're only useful to GM customers, by which I mean anyone who has bought a GM PCM (even used). I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that buying a PCM gives anyone a license to use the corresponding bin files for that PCM, I mean you get a bin file included in every PCM you buy at a junk yard and you can't use the PCM without it. Plus there are people using ebay to sell PCMs pre-flashed to whatever bin file you need - I've bought a couple that way myself. And if GM isn't going after people who are doing this stuff commercially I don't think they're going to go after GM customers who are just helping other GM customers and not even profiting from it.
4) Reflashing is still the least expensive way to make these engines run with arbitrary upgrades, by far, so I think it's going to remain popular for a long time. Plus it avoids the hassle of integrating an aftermarket ECU with a factory wiring harness. I don't think aftermarket ECUs are going to eclipse reflashing until/unless the price comes down well under $500 with plug-and-play wiring... which might never happen.
I do think we're going to see the price of aftermarket ECUs drop steadily due to the fact that complex custom electronics in general is getting cheaper and more accessible. Stuff like speeduino is slowly but steadily going to be exerting downward pressure on the price tags of stuff from Holley / AEM / Syvecs / etc.
Please don't PM me with technical questions - start a thread instead, and send me a link to it. That way I can answer in public, and help other people who have the same question. Thanks!
Re: Multiple Questions
If the 1Mb PCM you speak of is memcal/EPROM based, you can only read half (64kB) of its bin via ALDL, assuming it's a standard factory bin or derivative thereof. Indeed, due to a bug, the last byte you get back is garbage, so it's only 64k-1B that can be read (and the lower portion of that is IO, RAM and EEPROM, since that's how the addresses are partitioned).
Joe.
Joe.