pcmhacking.net

Yeah the command is Device ID target (FA), Packet Length (56, has an offset), command aka mode (0A), checksum (A6).

The VT onwards ALDL cars are hard to talk too because the protocol was never designed for the amount of in car communications on the bus that they ended up with. There is a heartbeat from the BCM, then the modules fire off their data packets in their timeslices, then there is a short (100ms?) gap, then it all happens again. Its hard for a PC to time its message to go out in the gap. You can send a silence chatter command and the modules will stop talking for about 3 seconds, or you can unplug the bcm to make life easier as everything will stop when the heartbeat stops meaning you can put your data on the bus more easily.

The flashtool should silence the chatter though. It might be that your interface has too much lag to get the timing right and could be causing a collision on the bus, then the app is getting overrun with bus traffic it doesnt expect. At least it sounds like the silence chatter is failing. As for keys etc, you can do that with an MDI interface and the tech2win emulator software which you can license for a short period of time from GM, or with an actual tech2. And for bcm linking you can do the same or disable the security by reflashing the prom and disabling vats with off the shelf tools and definitions from here. True about difficulty to steal, though personally I wouldnt be too worried. Its somewhat unlikely (but not impossible) that people will try and steal it in the hope that software security is disabled.

Ah ok. Thanks. Some very good info there to help me understand things.
I actually have a background in early 80's home computers and BBS'ing, also Amateur Radio packet radio. So Serial com's are something I've been into and enjoyed for a lot of years.
The System in the VY reminds me a bit of the old Commodore 64 days. IEC Serial port for the disk drives and printers etc. All the peripherals had to wait their turn on the bus to chat and transfer data. Interesting.
I'm not sure if the 1320 Electronics interface suffers any lag issues or not. But I had a lot of trouble in the early days getting Tuner Pro to work with it and eventually the creator was able to doctor the config file for the interface to make it work. But often it takes many attempts to get a connect to the car. So yes it could be the problem.
OK. I'm just trying to get through a few things here locally including Fathers Day but I hope to attack all this again very soon.
Appreciate all the good info. Thanks.

Yeah i recognised the vk4 and thought it might have meant you were you in to radio. I held an F class for a while back in the day but then my mate who was doing it with me moved to vk4 and I let it slip. Thats why I gave you the description I did - I thought it'd make sense to you. The VY computer is definitely tech from the era your talking about. A 2mhz motorola 8 bit hc11 at its core, utilising bank switching in the top 32kb to be able to fit the engine and transmission data in its address space. In the same time as we Aussies did that, the parent company in the states moved to 68k processors and avoided the need for bank switching. Once it was a proven tech we received about the 3rd generation of the 68k platform on the v8s. But in the mean time (VZ) we moved from delco to bosch. The VY was the last of the hc11 platform and they had really pushed it as far as they could in every way!

Wow. You should get your Call back. They would have your certificate of proficiency on file, you would just have to pay your license fee again.
ACMA Are just about to make changes to the F Call that should see you guys getting increased power and digital modes (something that may interest you? Packet etc).

HC11 and bank switching. Once again yep, Commodore 64 etc used bank switching to expand past it's limit of 64K.
And Motorola 68000 were a big deal due to the Amiga era of CBM. A good friend of mine actually wrote an amazing Disassembler for the Amiga back in the day.
It was called "Resource".

I'm going to have another crack at this thing before the weeks out hopefully.

I was going to order that locked software last night but it got too late and I doubt the cable would come in time now for the weekend so it gives me more time to tinker with the good PD stuff in the mean time.

See how we go..

why dont you post up the logs of what happens when you try and connect from oseplugin? we'll be able to see if the silence chatter is failing.

OK. Thanks. I can do that.
I did actually generate a couple of logs in case someone was prepared to look at them for me.
I've just looked now though and can't work out where they got saved to or what they are called so I might have to do it again yet.
I'll keep looking tonight though.

Just cut and paste it out of the text box in ose flash tool after you've tried it.