PCMTec Development Blog

[rolls]

Here's a pic of the BA PCM; A3AC 3R23-12A650-AAC ABU-242

How did you go about getting the back plate off? Its well and truly stuck down.

I think I used a small screwdriver to pry it off. I butchered it though. It will never go back on again

I was going to try and connect with BDM to it. I found some stuff in the UK where guys have done it with ford fiesta mpc555 ecu's.
I just never got around to figuring out the pins on the board.

Got a link ? Be interesting to see how far they got.

[rolls]

Just an update. Only had about 8 hours last week and probably no more this week hence not many updates.

If I could somehow work fulltime on this I would have something out so much faster! Wish I had more spare time.

[Holden202T]

Wish I had more spare time.

don't we all

[Gareth]

ditto

[MeZmeriZe]

Ok I misread the PM, the VCM2 does not seem to work with the two people who have tried it, simply won't connect at all. Suspect there is something funky going on with the drivers, will report back if we get it working.

FWTW I never successfully got my VCM2 to work as just a J2534. mind you I didn't remove all the VCM stuff and just leave the J2534 drivers, I suspect that might be what you need to do.

[MeZmeriZe]

Ford focus has a tricore ecu and I'm pretty sure you have to upload a boatloader like with the gm ecus. Probably won't investigate this any time soon.

Glad the program works for you. Speed should be very similar to ids hpt and sct, does it write in about 50 seconds?

I'm not sure that is the case.. The author of BE said it took him a year to get the tricore working because it's not the normal challenge response of the previous PCMs..

[rolls]

Ford focus has a tricore ecu and I'm pretty sure you have to upload a boatloader like with the gm ecus. Probably won't investigate this any time soon.

Glad the program works for you. Speed should be very similar to ids hpt and sct, does it write in about 50 seconds?

I'm not sure that is the case.. The author of BE said it took him a year to get the tricore working because it's not the normal challenge response of the previous PCMs..

Totally possible, I'm only guessing how it works.

[MeZmeriZe]

the HP tuner i had took around 2 mins 20sec to flash.
best price i can find for a new open port 2.0 on ebay usa is about $370 to my door.
the hp tuner is around $700.

any luck getting it to work with vc diag? they are a lot cheaper.
I will order an open port if you think it will work the best for me.
Im keen to test on my spare ecu. I dont care if I brick it, only cost $50 from local wreckers & he's got plenty more.
I also thought about upgrading the BF ecu so I can have the dual vct.

Here's a pic of the BA PCM; A3AC 3R23-12A650-AAC ABU-242

Heh.. I've got a photo just like that of both a BA and BF PCM. you are more patent than me though, I just angle ground around the outside and the plug. I wasn't planning on using them again.. wanted to see if they had anything like Jtags and also to see if the BA PCM with it's blank third plug would be hard to add the turbo pins to. (because you can get the same version as the Turbo PCM in a naturally aspirated, but it's missing the third plug pins) The LPG ones that have the third plug pins are a different hardware versions so it would probably be easier to add the pins to the NA PCM.

Rolls, The BA has much slower ram to the BF, with either VCM or J2534 it always takes about 3 and a half minutes.

I'm also in the midst of converting my BA to a BF electronically.. my rear harnesses are already BF and the ICC/BCM are too... then I started wondering how hard it'd be to upgrade that to FG PCM and BCM and cluster.. I have about 20 PCM's here, BA, BF and FG (only one or two FG though) I've grabbed about 6 or 7 bins from those and cars that I fix columns for.. I have things as diverse as a a BF2.5 Xr6, fairmont BA, factory LPG BA wagon etc etc.. basically I want bin files for every PCM hardware version so we can see what the differences are..... might open some doors.

Rolls, it would be helpful to be able to view edit the Vid block.. Not necessarily the VIN, (but if you swap PCM's that'd be handy too) but rather diff ratio, tyre size fuel type etc. all the stuff BE lets you edit.

That reminds me, BE lets you edit on the fly.. so you can be sitting in the passanger seat tuning your car while someone else is driving... so rather than a complete write, it can do individual settings on the fly.
It also has a binary diff feature.. so you can bring up to bins and it will tell you what is different (assuming you have a schema to tell it what those differences are) I don't know if it's a popular feature or not, but if you are on a dyno paying for time you don't really want to wait 3.5 minutes to test every change.

[rolls]

Yeah I don't see any reason why you can't just write the VID block or partially write tables directly, I haven't actually tried it or investigated if the writes must lie on certain boundaries but it should be possible. My auto detect routine simply reads the VIN/strategy (only 36 bytes of data). I probably won't do it initially though as the BF PCM only takes 40 seconds to write which is pretty quick. Nothing stopping you downloading my source code and trying it out yourself. Anything is possible, all it requires is the time to implement and test it.

Does BE require you to cycle the ignition power and FEPS to write the VID block? I'm wondering if they do a data transfer or if there is an OBD command that lets you write the VID via other means. I'll send you a copy with my new sniffing capabilities, be interesting to see what they do. The sniffer may only work with Open Port though as it uses some proprietary J2534 connect flags.

I have an idea in my head of modifying the code to write the tables to RAM on bootup, then replace the ROM pointers to RAM pointers. I then write directly to the RAM to allow for live tuning. This is how they accomplished live tuning on the GM PCMs so I see no reason why it couldn't be done on the Ford ones with enough time put into it.

I have plans for tune compare but not until I get the editor software working well.

[MeZmeriZe]

"I was going to try and connect with BDM to it. I found some stuff in the UK where guys have done it with ford fiesta mpc555 ecu's.
I just never got around to figuring out the pins on the board."

Anychance you could do some closer pics of the board? Might help identify chips and things to possibly attack.

At minimum.. at least will be able to pinpoint the required pins for the MCU, and can back trace from their with a probe or direct connect from the chip.

Hi Tazzi,

I had the same hope... Sadly Ford (or Visteon in this case, who split off from ford to become a standalone company) are known for obscuring the chip numbers on their PCM's and also of coating in them in gunk that makes it near impossible to get the board out without naffing it.
Here is a youtube clip of a MPC555 PCM getting read via BDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmM2H6cEOUc

Here is a higher res pic of BA and BF PCM's with the back plate cut off.
https://money2.biz.uwa.edu.au/franki/PP ... BA_PCM.jpg

https://money2.biz.uwa.edu.au/franki/PP ... BF_PCM.jpg

I've put them as URL's rather than img because they are over 8MB each.

You can see the goop on the chips and the fact that there is no writing on most of them.