Can a caveman do DIY EFI? Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

[STINEY]

Jumpered. Went as far as the directions say I can without a laptop - which should be showing up tomorrow or Tuesday.

Checked my serial cable, seems to be the correct type. Nothing to do now but wait.....boo....

[dieselgeek]

From careful scrutiny of the manual (and hopping all over, from HEI control to MS control of MSD to direct control of a coil) it sounds like where I want to end up eventually is direct control of a MSD box. And that would mean jumpering JS10 to IGBTIN with IGBTOUT jumpered to IGN.

I get that. It makes sense at this point.

But what I'm unsure of is - since I plan on doing fuel first and ign later, should I leave JS10 to IGBTIN unjumpered until I do ign control? Or can I go ahead and jumper it now? What is the ramifications of either?

The "IGBT" is a power transistor that is good for driving coils directly - I hate it, it invites noise inside the box. you don't need it for the MSD, but you can have it jumpered "in" or "out" of the circuit and it'll still drive an MSD. The MSD box draws very low current over it's "points/inductive" (white wire) input. There's not a lot of noise using it that way. Sounds like you've jumpered yours to be able to drive a coil if you want, down the road. I prefer using an MSD box on a distributor application though. It just works too good.

In regards to if it hurts to have it jumpered in or not when you are only going Fuel control at first - not at all. It doesn't mind hanging out in the breeze waiting until you're ready to drive an ignition with it.

Sorry for the delay, was on a tuning trip this weekend.

[STINEY]

Thank Scott. So if I end up with some weird ignition related issue, I'll know to come back to this stage and un-jumper the IGBT stuff?

Santa came again tonight. 2 laptops, both powerup, running diagnostic stuff now - they've been one step from the trash can for a couple-few years, my wife's friend set me up for the grand price of FREE! Now if at least one of them is useful, that's another question....

[squirrel]

they should be useful. As long as you can get an operating system on one of them, and a usb hole works (or if you get lucky and there's a real serial port)

[STINEY]

No real serial ports, unfortunately. Have one in recovery mode tonight, not looking real good for it as the last good point was in 2010 and a catastrophic failure occured after that. 60 days in past recovery doesn't like.....

The other boots up. Has a crap-ton of huge resource hog junk games and other assorted crap on it, I've been uninstalling like a madman. Lots of hope for it. Windows XP machine. Battery even works, I believe.

[STINEY]

Laptop update..... the Acer definitely has a great battery, but the hard drive just took a dump. I had just loaded TunerStudio the night before too! AAaagh! By the way, I noticed afterwards it sadi TunerStudio LITE, didn't notice that at first.

So I'll be getting a new hard drive (Toshiba) and reloading Windows XP and starting from scratch again with TunerStudio.

[STINEY]

My friendly mail carrier left me another package today, the stimulator arrived.

Took care of some other stuff quick - - fixed my Mom's windshield squirters on her '95 Grand Cherokee (mice chewed 1' section complete gone under cowl), fed the boys, visited briefly before Mom went home, read bedtime stories, then got down to work!

By 10:00 it was completed and tested, and by 10:30 the MSII board was tested as far as I can up to this point. Even checked my serial cable while I was at it, everything is A-OK and good to go for the next stage.

Stopped by the downtown computer gurus, quoted me a rough $220 to repair the laptop. Thing is, I can get a new 100G drive off the Internet for $80, and I can maybe scrounge Windows XP discs from a IT neighbor for the reload..........I'm just not sure I want to dump $200+ into this laptop. Computer Gurus mentioned I could maybe use one of the new tablet something or others for the same money?



Oh, and DIY Autotune sent this too. Luvin' it.....

[squirrel]

You can buy a netbook at walmart for $248....I'm using one for my playing around with MS.

Although you can fix an old computer for cheaper than that, if you start with the right old computer.

[STINEY]

You can buy a netbook at walmart for $248....I'm using one for my playing around with MS.

Although you can fix an old computer for cheaper than that, if you start with the right old computer.

That's what he mentioned, a netbook. Thanks! Will the netbook do everything needed for MSII? Or are there some compromises?

Start with the right old computer ----- I'm listening......school me please, I'm an empty bucket on the subject.

[TheSilverBuick]

I want a net book for tuning, just haven't broken down and bought one. It'd work just fine.

[squirrel]

The screen size on a netbook is a limitation, the one I have (and also the 4 that the other members of my immediate family have) are 1024 x 600 pixels...that's not real big. Although most modern medium size laptops have 1366 x 720, and some are 1920 x 1080. Usually the old "square" screen laptops are 1024 x 768.

As for getting the "right" old computer to fix up cheap...sounds like the one with the bad hard drive is one of them, if you have the parts needed to get it going again. You don't need much hard drive capacity at all to run XP and the tuning software, you could easily fit it on a 20gb hard drive. You need to figure out if it takes a SATA or PATA hard drive--the SATA has a couple small flat connectors on the edge, the PATA has a long double row of pins. Either one you should be able to find a small capacity one on ebay cheap.

Having an operating system disc (or a way to use a USB drive to do it) can be tricky though...especially on an older laptop, or one that does not have an internal CD drive.

[STINEY]

Thanks Squirrel. The Acer has the double row of pins, so it must be PATA. Both of the laptops have CD drives, no floppys here. Plenty of USB ports too.

I have the Product Key info for XP that was originally installed on the Acer.......but I don't have the install discs. I'm thinking if I could round up some XP install discs, that they, along with the Product Key, are all I would need for a reinstall on a new hard drive?

I just popped open the HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop, it has a SATA harddrive with 1G? Is that possible? Seems rather small..... I must be reading it wrong, in another place it says 250.0GB, and this was an entertainment special, so it about has to be 250. This one also was running Vista Home, and I have the Product Key for it as well.

[squirrel]

I think you need a product key for the specific "distribution" of xp, but I'm not sure, I haven't really played around with it.

Also think about linux, I don't know if the software you need is all available to run on linux, but it might be...it's free, and the modern versions work pretty well and are user friendly. You just need to download it on another computer that has a CD recorder drive, make a CD, and install it. It's not too hard to use, it works kind of like windows with some differences...

[STINEY]

BIG THANKS GOING OUT TO MIKE! THANK YOU NEIGHBOR!!

"New" laptop arrived 10 minutes ago, its a Del Latitude D800 with windows XP AND a serial port.

(And I just bought a USB adapter for the other ones, anyone need a new in box serial adapter?)

I'm downloading TUnerStudio from this link http://tunerstudio.com/index.php/tuner-studio

Its TunerStudio MS Lite! v1.006

Under ECU definitions, I see no match? My daughterboard says MSII V3.01(C) - - is this the revision number I'm trying to match? I see no other place with a similar number, and the dropdown options don't match exactly.

The closest I see is MSII Rev 3.10800 and I'm skeptical that is what I'm after?

[dieselgeek]

Is your MS assembled enough that the CPU is online? TunerStudio has an awesome "autodetect" routine. If not, what you're looking for is the Firmware revision - not the CPU version. Whatever is installed at the factory on your CPU is that firmware. Autodetect probably your best bet. Or, pick a firmware and just force a download...