1997 F-Body Tools

[JimCT_9C1]

Thank you Tom and kur4o for keeping on with the goal of creating a read/write flash tool for these pcms!

Been away for a while. I'll the give read/upload from post#34 a go, although not sure how far I'll get using my adapter cables vs HBC. The new interface looks clean. I second kur4o's suggestion to keep a debug or log somewhere in case it's needed.

The file format of 192k stacked bin (3x64k: Tside Bank0, Tside Bank1, Eside) is a nice direct way to lay out the bin. As pointed out in post#42,44 this format will make things easier going forward with definition files, etc.

Eventually, it would be handy to be able to read/load bins into the tool from disk that may be in other formats such as non-padded 144k (post#24,43), 145k cal (post#38) or other(?) format. Once in the tool,they could be saved to disk in 192k format for editing or written to pcm. Similar to Bin Converter utility in FlashHack.

Thanks again to you and all contributors for great work and progress!

Jim

[Tom H]

The file format of 192k stacked bin (3x64k: Tside Bank0, Tside Bank1, Eside) is a nice direct way to lay out the bin. As pointed out in post#42,44 this format will make things easier going forward with definition files, etc.
Jim

Seems I can't leave well enough alone... I made a slight change to the format: I added a 4K comment field to the front of the file. This means if you had a bunch of modified files, you could access the comment with just the notepad editor and read your comments. By default I fill this field with date and time, but you could add any comments you like. Things like made this change to this table and so on. I will try to post an example later today.

My code is tied to the HBC. Won't accept any serial port that doesn't boot with a matching string. Also, no longer is CRC done in the cable. This means that crc covers the transfer end to end. Much more secure of error. Last up the HBC checks the downstream and upstream flow for errors. Since my receiver is independent of the transmitter, the sent command is also received and fed back to software. This ensures that what you send on the bus actually got there. Finally support for xon/xoff.
There is new software for HBC that must be used. When all is done I will post it with everything else.

In an hour or so I can probably post a sample file from my bench PCM.


Still looking for a test PCM. If you have a brick or an unused PCM from OBDII years it's golden

-Tom

[Tom H]

Actually didn't take much time to make a binary. I dumped the content of both FLASH (both pages for TSide) in about 4 minutes. This is still with X1 speed.

Here is the output file. I added a few comments to show why I added the bit at the front. You can open it with just your notepad (open with ...) to see the comments stored with the code.This should help keep track of what mods are in the file and so on. One more thing though don't change the comments with notepad. This would probably offset the entire content of the file and make it a producer of bricks.

Here is the output file of my first run. You can change the extension to .bin and you will have what I started with.

-Tom

[JimCT_9C1]

Thanks for sharing, Tom.

Took a quick look and played with it a little bit.

One thing I would suggest is to place the comment/scratch area at the end of the file rather than the beginning; starting after the 192k bin data. This will avoid having to deal with offset memory addresses in definition files etc, and also avoids the potential problem you pointed out of inserted or deleted comment bytes offsetting the following bin data in the file.

I verified that TunerPro would correctly read, interpret, edit, and write files with additional information appended after the bin data. I tested using LT1 OBD1 xdf and bin files. I added and edited comments via Notepad, as well as cut and pasted the comment block from your file and edited that, before and after editing the bin data. Random length comments, separators, etc all worked with no need or effort to try to maintain a fixed block size or structure. The only downside was the need to drag to the bottom of the file after opening with Notepad to view or add comments. I think the robustness to accept unstructured input and not affect the bin data outweighs this minor inconvenience.

Interested to hear what other potential users may think.

Thanks again for all you've done!

Jim

[Tom H]

Jim,

I changed the format as you suggest. The only difference is that to view the comment (identify what the file contains) you need to scroll to the end. No big deal.

The Upload/Read part of the program is just about done now. I had trouble with the reading taking more time than windows permitted before marking the window as unresponsive. To fix this all the program is now multi-threaded so that controls such as progress bars and whatnot can all be updated with ease.

Here is the latest image of the main screen:

Tool2.jpg

Once you build the HBC, let me know and I will send over test software.

Now starting on the programming. Kur4o provided all the programming code we need to download into PCM RAM. I can re-use the same code was written for the upload section in most cases.

I need to get out to the local U-PULL-A_PART people and see if I can score another PCM. No luck till now, I think most of these were melted down up here in the salt belt.

-Tom

[Tom H]

Reading/upload is now complete except for the request from Kur4o for debug logging. I will get a look at that while the search for an LT1 OBDII PCM goes on...

There may be some interest in duplicating this capability for use with another cable. I have enclosed a transcript of the Class II bus for anyone interested.

In the file attached the first line is just to ensure the correct port is selected and opened
Lines 2 through 15 set up the download of code into internal ram
Lines 16 through 105 are downloading of the code to support modes $35 and $37 (not supported by the PCM native code)
Line 106 causes the downloaded code to execute, line 107 is the acknowledgement
Lines 108 through 9323 are the upload of flash from TSide bank 0, TSide bank 1 and ESide
Line 9324 causes the downloaded code to exit and reset the PCM, Line 9325 is the acknowledgement
Last two lines.. not necessary but are a request to normal activity on the ALDL

I hope to get to the programming side soon.

-Tom

[JimCT_9C1]

Thanks for the updates, Tom!

I'll catch up and take a look, been away from this for a couple weeks.
Great progress, thanks for the continued hard work!

Jim