pcmhacking.net

Sorry for the long delay in posting the answer. I hate when people do that.

I was able to successfully unbrick the pcms.
I used a hot air gun to remove the flash chip from the PCM, used a TL886a programmer off ebay with the appropriate chip adapters, and flashed a fresh 512 OS onto the chip.
This worked for both PCMs however I got a little carried away with flash didferent OS's onto them and burnt/melted one of the PCB board tracks for one of the flash pins off.

So if you take your time, and don't use a soldering iron to apply direct heat it works great.

I found Jaycar has liquid solder paste in tube.
You use the heat gun to remove the flash chip, flash/replace the chip, and then put a thing layer of the paste down.

When you heat it with the heat gun, the stuff morphs onto the pin tracks on the pcb board like a friggin T-1000, it's amazing.
Then just place the fresh chip in place, heat it and when you see the pin solders adhere, remove heat and let it cool.

All done.

You can buy the chips from China/Hong Kong off ebay for $1-3 each so if anyone is having troubles, just send me some blank chips and I can burn a fresh OS on them and send them back for you to swap out.
I won't do the soldering just because i don't want to owe you a new PCM, but if you take your time it works great.

Tried soldering wires from the programmer to the chip onboard instead?

Wires are much easier to add/remove then full chips

My bench ecu has had the chip on and off a few times now.
Easier than fitting an EEPROM to an old memcal.

Well that all depends on what tools you have available. I dont have a hot air reflow station (though I should buy one) and tried to do this with solder wick and a knife to lift the IC. It was touch and go, managed to get one side lifted ok but got over eager on the second and lifted a track. The operating frequencies are much higher than the old 808 and co and I could not replace the track under the IC. Using a wire to bridge the pins (adding length) checked out with a multimeter but would not run the PCM. If I was to try it again I'd get the right tools and do it as described above!

Maybe I've had good luck, soldering iron and heat gun. It doesn't look pretty and K wouldn't run it in a car. But works great on the bench. Not a fun job though really.

did anyone try programming the flash chip in circuit? Be interested to know if it was successful...

Yes, I believe Thaniel has done it with arduino code and a clip over the IC. There is also BDM (USB BDM-NT) which supposedly comes with libraries to do the flash on the 0411 and has fewer wires. http://www.usbjtag.com/jtagnt/ecu411/index.php

antus wrote:Yes, I believe Thaniel has done it with arduino code and a clip over the IC. There is also BDM (USB BDM-NT) which supposedly comes with libraries to do the flash on the 0411 and has fewer wires. http://www.usbjtag.com/jtagnt/ecu411/index.php

Thanks Antus, looking back over his posts - it looks like he was using an arduino as a VPW interface?

I wonder if Vpp applied to the chip during read/write would make the processor wake up and interfere