does your ALDL setup have indicators on it that light up when comms are happening? I think I'm going to have to throw more mode 8 commands into the initialization scheme and specifically shut up both E and T side before attempting to communicate with either. it's strange, for whatever reason the calibrations I run in the same PCM don't exhibit the same behavior, when I send mode 8 commands to it, it quits talking for the 2 or so second timeout that a mode 8 with nothing after it should cause.