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Thread: Uber-easy DIY USB ALDL Cable

  1. #331
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    Got my resistors and diodes a couple days ago, added them into my harness and still no luck, although I don't think that's where my issue lies right now. It still appears to function fine when plugged into the diagnostic port on the car, but completely stops functioning when plugged into either laptop. It also fails the cable test from tunerpro rt (when not plugged into the car of course) which is new, and datamaster says it can recognize it, but that the pcm is unrecognized. That's the first I've seen that response from datamaster, whereas before it would connect to the pcm, but was unable to maintain a connection and was possibly receiving some erroneous data.

    I've been in touch with the seller, based on what I've described they've decided that it may be defective and will refund my money, after which I'll buy another one and try again. At least the weather has been crappy, the only reason I was so impatient to get this working was due to some nice weather a couple weeks ago. Wanted to start doing some tuning so I could move move forward with other mods that would require it. But when the weather sucks, I have little interest in being outside working on a car if I don't have to. Here's hoping I have better luck next week.

  2. #332
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    You most likely brick it.
    I saw you test it with different drivers which is where your problem is.
    Official drivers v.-11 and -12 brick the device if it is chinese clone chip.
    If it`s original chip they won`t brick it.
    There is a way to bring it back to life but you have to use google for that and a linux I guess.

  3. #333
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    Quote Originally Posted by kur4o View Post
    You most likely brick it.
    I saw you test it with different drivers which is where your problem is.
    Official drivers v.-11 and -12 brick the device if it is chinese clone chip.
    If it`s original chip they won`t brick it.
    There is a way to bring it back to life but you have to use google for that and a linux I guess.
    That's interesting, I did try a bunch of different drivers. I don't remember every version, but 12 may have been one of them. I assume it's a chinese chip, they all seem to be from there. If you or anyone has an alternate source I'd be interested, I'm usually the first to be irrationally critical of chinese made stuff. And somewhere I have a bootable linux install on a flash drive, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try and see if I can fix it if that is what happened. That's the first I've heard of bricking one though, I searched a variety of different forums trying to learn more about them before purchasing one and never saw that, I knew some drivers were known not to work correctly in this application, but nothing about bricking them. I'll try to find that flash drive, do some googling and see what I can come up with. It'd be great if I can get this working. I appreciate the info.

  4. #334
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    Well it doesn't seem to be bricked. I had used a couple of 2.12.xx drivers though. The info I found so far say to use a utility from the ftdi website, mprog of ftprog, the latter of which I already had downloaded to check something else. (Another forum I found had said some devices were shipped with some settings inverted, which would cause it to not function correctly, mine appeared fine when I checked so I never changed anything.) With the utility it found the device right away and was still reporting the correct vendorID and ProdID, which is apparently what the driver changes. It would change usually the ProdID from 6001 to 0000 on devices it believed were counterfeit so that windows wouldn't recognize it and be unable to load the drivers for it. But as I said, mine was still reporting the correct ID, and it's still recognized by windows and correctly identified in the device manager when plugged in. For the heck of it I manually changed it anyways, to the correct 6001 and reflashed the device, which appeared to complete successfully, but it still fails the test in tunerpro rt. I can't say which driver I'm running right now, but I think I may do a more in depth wiping of all the drivers, manually load some older ones and do some fiddling with some .inf files and see if I can get any better results. You'd think this would be easier.

  5. #335
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    I looked closer at the board and it seems it`s missing the led and resistor for power-on. Does anything lights solid when you plug it in the usb port.
    So the board should be fine and the problem may lie in the car or the connection to the car. You can dump the resistor and diode you ordered, they might worsen the communication.
    If you can find serial port logger you can check what messages are send and recieved.
    Try removing PCM from car and make off-board attempt.
    Also give full list with the software you tried with definition files attached.

  6. #336
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    Quote Originally Posted by kur4o View Post
    I looked closer at the board and it seems it`s missing the led and resistor for power-on. Does anything lights solid when you plug it in the usb port.
    So the board should be fine and the problem may lie in the car or the connection to the car. You can dump the resistor and diode you ordered, they might worsen the communication.
    If you can find serial port logger you can check what messages are send and recieved.
    Try removing PCM from car and make off-board attempt.
    Also give full list with the software you tried with definition files attached.
    I've never seen a solid LED when it's on. When I plug it into the USB on a computer both the Tx and Rx LEDs will flash 3 or 4 times and you'll hear the normal sound from the computer detecting a USB device being inserted. If I already have drivers loaded nothing else happens and it will be visible in device manager under usb devices as a usb serial converter and under ports as usb serial port, right now at COM10, but I've experimented with setting to a different port as well. If no drivers are loaded, it attempts to find and install them, but I usually interrupt that and just manually load drivers myself.

    When it's connected to the PCM alone and the car is on or running, both Rx and Tx LEDs will be rapidly flashing synchronously, fast enough that they almost appear to be solid on. Once I connect the USB cable though the LEDs completely turn off. While only connected to a computer, as I said they will be off except when I try a cable test there will be a single flash of the Tx LED.

    The two main programs I've tried so far are: Datamaster which has the $EE definition built in, I don't believe you can change that. The only thing you need to do is select which car it is, Y, F or B/D body and if applicable manual or auto trans. I have a '94 Fleetwood which is the D-body and the B/D's only came with autos so that's the only appropriate selection available within the program. And Tunerpro RT ver5 and I don't recall where I downloaded the exact file I'm using, I grabbed one from their website for sure, possibly one from this forum as well. I'll attach the one I'm using, it's an xdf. I also have an adx version of it downloaded, but I haven't tried to use that anywhere yet.

    As far as the car or PCM having an issue, while I certainly couldn't rule it out, I have reason to believe they're working fine. It's my daily driver and functions perfectly, no serious DTCs and none of the trouble lights ever come on. I also have an old dealer level scantool, an OTC 4000E (which I believe is equivalent to a GM Tech1) with the correct cartridge and I have no trouble establishing a connection with that. I can get into every single computer in the car and monitor the live datastream, view and clear codes, and while I'm certainly not an expert mechanic, of the data I do understand everything appears normal. So I'm inclined to believe that the PCM as well as the diagnostic port are working properly. If I had to though, I could pull the PCM and rig up a bench test, I've heard of some people using old pc power supplies to get a clean and stable 12v to power it up and I have plenty of old computer parts laying around. I'd maybe try that in a few days, it's supposed to warm back up this week.

    Later today I can throw together another harness without the resistors and diodes and see what happens, since I soldered all my connections it'll be a pain to remove the ones I added to my first harness. Although I'm far from completely understanding how this is all supposed to work, what I can gather from the various places where I've found information, is that the adapter board (or at least some versions) only like to see 3.3v and since the PCM transmits/receives data at 5v the 1k resistor is meant to reduce that voltage to the Rx terminal of the adapter. My board has 3.3v and 5v printed on the back, but no means to switch that (I've seen some versions with a jumper on the board) so I assume it's handled by the chip or has some other means of dealing with that, and yet others with the exact same board have said to add the resistor and diode, hence my confusion. And the reason the diode goes onto the Tx terminal I assume is to only allow data to travel in one direction eliminating any weird interference between the data being sent and received. But I could be way off on that.

    I did find a serial logger so once I put together another harness without the resistor and diode, if datamaster can connect to the PCM (since that's the only one I've had success with so far, albeit limited) I'll see what if anything I can get from that. I think that covers everything so far. I'll post an update if I learn anything new later today. Thank you again for your help.
    Attached Files Attached Files

  7. #337
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    To use tunerpro you need to load correct adx def file. I see you somehow skipped this step.
    There is two you can try.
    Make sure you remove the resistor and diode first. If it still doesn`t work try with them.
    You ruled out every possible problem.
    Software is the last one.

    There are other programm you can try to connect like eehack and some others. They are free and easy to use, use google to find them.

  8. #338
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    Quote Originally Posted by kur4o View Post
    To use tunerpro you need to load correct adx def file. I see you somehow skipped this step.
    There is two you can try.
    Make sure you remove the resistor and diode first. If it still doesn`t work try with them.
    You ruled out every possible problem.
    Software is the last one.

    There are other programm you can try to connect like eehack and some others. They are free and easy to use, use google to find them.

    I may have found a couple of my problems. First, yes I believe you're right, I never loaded the adx into tunerpro, somehow I overlooked that and it would explain why it wouldn't sync up with the PCM. I loaded the one I had and for the heck of it attempted to start data acquisition even though I'm not hooked up to the car. It attempted to connect and I saw one of the LEDs on the adapter board flash a few times before it gave up trying to connect. That's the first I've gotten that response. As of now though, when I test the adapter from tunerpro it still reports that it can't be found or isn't working. But I may hook up to the car once and just see what happens.

    Also I found another thread on another forum where a guy was attempting a similar setup on a '95 Vette and described a similar condition to what I was seeing with Datamaster, it would sync up and start collecting data but would frequently disconnect and some of the data appeared to be jibberish. They finally narrowed it down to the CCM in the car interfering with the datastream from the PCM. The only other LT1 powered cars to get a CCM were, da da da, the Fleetwoods. They knew how to get it to shut up and after playing with a variety of signals and coding they eventually got it working correctly, essentially a special command has to be sent telling the CCM to go silent. Otherwise it hogs bandwidth and corrupts the datastream. Someone modified the definition files for the Vette version to correct for this, but maybe that's where my issues are coming from. Then again, maybe not, but what he described sounded awfully similar to what I was seeing on mine until the adapter stopped working at all.

    Anyways, I've rolled back my drivers to an older, known working version and wiped the others from the system just to be sure, and I'll go out later and hook up to the car and see what if anything I can achieve. Part of me still thinks that somewhere along the way the chip either gave up the ghost due to it likely being a counterfeit, or I somehow fried it with my multitudes of testing variations, but either way, I absolutely won't attempt to reflash the PCM with this one, even if I can successfully datalog, I don't trust it at this point. I also downloaded the files you uploaded, I'll try them as well for good measure. And if nothing else works I'll try the serial logger and see what that captures.

  9. #339
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    Corvette ALDL line is very busy and it needs fine tune of timings.
    I guess the situation is the same on this specific d-body.
    When you try to connect with tunerpro you can play with timing setting untill you get solid connection.
    You may need comm logger for perfect timing.

    It is good idea with all that traffic to try off car flash even with other verified adapter.

  10. #340
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    I used one of these to build a cable to talk to a 16197427:

    https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9716

    Also bought a USB cable and 6 pin header to plug into the board. Soldered a length of wire to the TX and RX pins and another to the Ground pin. Windows 10 picked it right up, installed drivers, and it passes the TunerPro cable test.
    1990 Chevrolet K2500, RCLB, Blueprint 383 TBI (16197427 ECM / 61 lb/hr / 16 psi FP), NV4500, NP241C, 4.10

  11. #341
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    Been busy with other repairs and tuneup related items, but I decided in the interim to break down and just order a commercially available ALDL to USB adapter. Good news, it seems much happier than my homemade one. Bad news, I still can't datalog, read my stock tune, or do pretty much anything else. However, the results are maddeningly similar and yet also so completely different from my homemade adapter that I'm starting to think I'm just losing my mind. Datamaster passes adapter check and PCM check every time. Datamaster will not actually sync or acquire any data of any kind, not even the VIN, but I still need to play with the timing settings. (It actually suggested in one of the errors that I try changing one of them, I fiddled with the one it indicated to no avail so far). I messed with a few other settings, basically just turned off CCM handshake, dashboard refresh, and both at the same time. No real difference except when both are disabled, literally nothing happens. It won't connect, but it doesn't bounce back and forth between errors.

    I do believe there may be something to the issue of timing settings, so I'm going to see what I find out about that and play with it some more tomorrow. In tunerpro rt it will pass cable check every time, and almost every time it will acquire a data signal, which I couldn't do with the old one. However when I brought up the data lists virtually all the data it was receiving was total gibberish just like datamaster was with my homemade adapter. I recorded a little bit of the stream just for the hell of it, but I haven't even bothered to review it yet. I believe I'm still using the same xdf and adx files I started with, so I might try changing those out with some alternates for the sake of ruling them out. I'm also not certain if I can change timing settings directly in tunerpro or not, haven't looked into it.

    TunerCats RT seemed to be able to find the adapter, but that was as far as it got. However I've messed with that program very little so I have no idea what I'm doing in there yet. For lack of anything better to do I decided to take my multimeter and probe my ground and data pins in the ALDL port to see if maybe I was getting some voltage spikes or something weird. It held pretty constant at 3.3v which I guess is good, but I thought the datastream transmitted at 5v. I could be wrong on that though, I need to double check.

    Only other thing I can think of worth mentioning is in TunerPro, while it was connected near the bottom it has a frequency display that mostly like to go back and forth between 3.33hz and 4.99hz, but I saw other values as low as 1.66hz and as high as 8.32hz. Having not had a successful encounter with any of this stuff yet I don't know if that's normal or not. I may play around some more over the next few days, or I may finally break down and pull the PCM out and attempt a bench test to see what's what. While bench testing will offer some useful information, it's pointless from tuning aspect since I obviously can't datalog and that's the primary reason for doing this.

    I guess if I get really desperate I could try unplugging my CCM to see if that really is causing my issues, although I'm not certain how happy the car will be if I do that. I'll look into what exactly that system runs, and while I know it's tied in with the PCM and most everything inside the car will stop working, if the damn thing is a least driveable without it and allows me to datalog without drama, I'd be happy. As usual, I'm long-winded, but if you guys have any thoughts or insight, feel free to enlighten me.

    Last edited by schlicky13; 04-21-2016 at 04:37 AM.

  12. #342
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    Ultimately it turns out I may not have been doing anything wrong, Fleetwoods are apparently just stupid. Finally received some credible information from another user on here and a couple new threads on the Impala SS forum that indicates the Fleetwoods have way too much chatter on the ALDL port from all the different modules in the car. (Something that I'd begun to suspect, and that the normal Impala/Caprice and Camaro/Firebird guys have never encountered since those cars don't use all these other computer modules.) The easy, temporary fix is reportedly to just pull all the fuses that power those other modules. That will allow a clean connection to the PCM so that you can back up your stock tune and flash new tunes to it. I haven't tried it yet myself, but will do so shortly.

    So in the end, it seems my troubles had nothing to do with whether or not I had the right FTDI chip, the right drivers, the right harness, etc., etc., the car itself is just difficult to work with. Obviously I can also still just pull the PCM and do bench tunes, but ultimately none of this solves the issues of being able to datalog so that I can fine tune the car, but at least I can do some stuff. I doubt this will be the end of my saga, but at least it's a start, and I appreciate the help and ideas that I got from everyone who responded.

  13. #343
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    Hey has anybody tried the new integrated chip + USB cables that are for sale on Ebay now? If these work right, all you have to do is wire them up to your OBD1 ALDL plug and you're good to tune, or solder it directly to the ALDL port on your car and instant USB tuning connection for $5. Am I missing anything?

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/FTDI-FT232RL...EAAOSwv-NWYE0M

  14. #344
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    Quote Originally Posted by sherlock9c1 View Post
    Hey has anybody tried the new integrated chip + USB cables that are for sale on Ebay now? If these work right, all you have to do is wire them up to your OBD1 ALDL plug and you're good to tune, or solder it directly to the ALDL port on your car and instant USB tuning connection for $5. Am I missing anything?

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/FTDI-FT232RL...EAAOSwv-NWYE0M
    That should work fine. I think I posted way back in this thread about using a Sparkfun FTDI based FT232R USB breakoutborad wired directly to an ALDL port and it worked fine. The cable you linked to looks to be a very similar design just in a different form factor.
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  15. #345
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    Just following up - according to another thread on this same site, the PL2303 chips are really an RS232-like connection, NOT TTL like FTDI is. Oh well. I'm only out $6.

    http://www.gearhead-efi.com/Fuel-Inj...4-95-Camaro%29

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