Oh, I see. You failed to understand the point. I made the mistake of assuming you understood the point but were looking for a reason why you couldn't program over ALDL. My mistake.

The point is there are some chips in the car that are difficult to get to and/or difficult to remove and just read using a chip burner. These are things like the CCM and the ABS, among other random computers. Dumping their contents and reverse-engineering them can allow you to figure out how they work, and potentially find interesting things that can be done with them that no one thought of, much like the innovation that goes into messing around with ECMs.

It may also be useful if you just want to dump your existing ROM before moving to an Ostrich as a starting point, and don't want to fabricate the adapter that would let you plug the MEMCAL into a chip burner to be read.

Plenty of potential uses.