Uber-easy DIY USB ALDL Cable

[Six_Shooter]

Alright Robert, I took the plunge and ordered 2 of the FT232R setups. 1 to mount permanently and another to make a cable to be used universally. I made the 2-transistor style cable a few days ago but haven't been able to locate a laptop with a serial connection and I'll be damned if I spend $40 for a serial-to-usb converter when I can build USB dedicated cheaper! KUDOS on the find! I will take pics and post the write up, giving you credit of course, if you don't mind.

On a side note, this will be my first real attempt at datalogging. The serial cable hooked to the desktop under my work bench doesn't really reflect on-the-road conditions. I have a 91 4.3L out of an S-10 transplanted into my 93 Jeep Wrangler (all wiring intact) except it has 2001 Vortec heads (so Edelbrock intake and NO EGR) and Edelbrock headers. My goal here is to log data to see if my only tuning problem is the EGR and either have a chip burnt or buy the MOATES APU1 and do it myself. I ran WINALDL but it didn't give me the info I was really looking for so I am now running Tunerpro RT. I would really love to learn this system. I have an AutoTap also for OBD2 that I picked up on Craigslist for next to nothing but have yet to use it

Any suggestions on a route to take for programming?

If you're buying/making the datalogging cable, you can use an Ostrich 2.0, along with the datalogging cable, to have real time emulation. You can then use a BURN2 to program an EPROM when you're happy with the tune, or you can use the Ostrich as a permanent replacement for the EPROM.

The APU1, has the EPROM Emulator, datalogging cable and programmer all built into one device. The one nice that that the APU1 has that going the seperates route doesn't is the 3 extra channels that can be datalogged.

[RobertISaar]

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-to-...863?r=99999999

another potential and ridiculously cheap USB-TTL converter.... it's not FTDI based though, so whether it works with 8192 baud or not is questionable.

[phonedawgz]

The PL2303HX chip is 3.3 to 1.8 on it's TTL output only, so there is no chance of it working for an ALDL cable.

I have tried with the 5v version of the PL2303 (PL2303H) but have not had success.

http://prolificusa.com/docs/2303/all...guide_v10B.pdf

To pre-answer the question - many of the boards that use these chips are designed to work with multiple versions of the chips. While the board shows a 5v output, and I think the chip might even offers a 5v power output, the TTL interface is the 3.3v version.