EEC Tuner, not found? Can't download.

Vernon

Registered User
Anybody using a tuner board ever have this problem? It's been working fine for about a month. I think it's something with the card itself. Anyone have some advice on this one?

Thanks, Vernon
 
I had a similar problem happen to me. I don’t have a laptop so I took it out of the car and used the AC/DC adapter but I had the polarities reversed on the adapter. Next thing you know I got this burning smell from the board. I immediately unplugged it. And reversed the polarity on the adapter and tried it again but the program could not find the tuner.
I though I fried the thing but I sent it to Brian Herron and he check it out on his car, and although it did some freaky things on his car it cleared up and worked fine. I got it back from him but I feel the thing is not making a good connection to the cars CPU. I’m waiting for Carlisle for him to tune the car with it.
I think I did fry the AC DC connection, I am assuming that Brian used the car 12v power to power it up and download his files on his laptop. I have since not tried to download or upload since I don’t have a laptop to use in the car and have the car power the board.
I don’t have an answer for you but this is my experience with it. I am starting not to like the thing but I already bough it so I am stuck with it.
 
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It's still working, I can tell it's using the last file I downloaded as my car runs much worse on the factory parameters. I just can't get the damn thing to talk to me anymore. Last Tuesday I used it to download a file and Friday I had the car on the scanner to run self diagnostics and check to see if my SC listed load on the scanner data. It didn't. Well I wrote a new file this morning that should work better than anything I've used yet and now the damn card won't read it. I've tried disconnecting the battery in the car to try and erase anything that may have been blocking but it didn't help. I reached behind the glove box and pressed against the connector. Once today I got it to start downloading, and it tells me that Max Output Shaft Speed isn't a reconized modifyer, so I took it out and tried again but it went back to "EEC Tuner not found" again. This kind of crap pisses me off. I hate having to always work on this car. I can't drive it one day much less a week without some new problem to fix or figure out.

Vernon
 
check for loose connection. It is always possible. Check simple things first then go to the hard things. It always ends up being the easiest thing that can go wrong. lol....

Your bro!
 
hey guys - looking forward to carlisle this year - I hope some people may be able to take a look at my car - I know its not "tuned" - I just get that feeling when I drive it - I know its not near 100% - and I know the ford dealer around here does not know anything about the sc's and would charge me an arm and a leg for something that I already know how to do anyways...
 
Are you sure you are not trying to download a parameter that is not recognised by your particular EEC? Or maybe you are trying to download a value that is out of range? Will it accept a previously known file? Are you able to upload your current modifications and do they match what you last put it?
 
It won't go in or out, I got it to start going once. I did a verify EEC Tuner and it came up and had a "needs updating" message. Then I sent my new file and got a parameter not reconized message. I deleted the bad parameter and retried only to go back to square one, no tuner found. A guy on the Corral says his only did this when the 9 pin cable went bad. I'll have to check it.

Vernon
 
Are you using Windows XP or earlier like win98. I had the same problems using XP. I could not download or update the tuner.
I use Windows98 without a problem when I need to upload a tuner file..


Also run a blank .eec file with just :'

All

End

To clear and reset the EEC.

Then download your new file .
 
It's on windows '95 or '98, I don't pay much attention but it's one of those. I haven't been doing that ALL END thing and didn't know about it until I was trying to figure this problem out. I'm home from a two day road trip in the SC now and will be trying to fix it tomorrow.

Vernon
 
ricardoa1 said:
I had a similar problem happen to me. I don’t have a laptop so I took it out of the car and used the AC/DC adapter but I had the polarities reversed on the adapter. Next thing you know I got this burning smell from the board. I immediately unplugged it. And reversed the polarity on the adapter and tried it again but the program could not find the tuner.
I though I fried the thing but I sent it to Brian Herron and he check it out on his car, and although it did some freaky things on his car it cleared up and worked fine. I got it back from him but I feel the thing is not making a good connection to the cars CPU. I’m waiting for Carlisle for him to tune the car with it.
I think I did fry the AC DC connection, I am assuming that Brian used the car 12v power to power it up and download his files on his laptop. I have since not tried to download or upload since I don’t have a laptop to use in the car and have the car power the board.
I don’t have an answer for you but this is my experience with it. I am starting not to like the thing but I already bough it so I am stuck with it.


Your lower front end looks solid!!!!! Where did u find this??(the skirting)
 
Can you try downloading it on a different laptop? I got the same message the first time I attempted to load a file, but it was because the com port settings were not correctly set on the laptop. Anyway, something to consider - sometimes you do some little thing on your computer and it changes the internal settings so they now conflict with something else...
 
Joe you are probably right, I took the Tuner out and was able to work with it from the home PC without any problems. So the problem is in the laptop. Afterwards I tried to reset the port address (if that's what it's called) but I couldn't find a way to do it from the shiftmaster software. I remember it asking for it during install and the default was COM 1 where I left it.

Is there anyone more computer literate than I who can instruct me on how to go about checking this on my laptop?

Thanks,
Vernon
 
Without specifically knowing what lines the software uses to communicate with, it would be difficult to do troubleshooting remotely.

With a laptop, often the bios can turn on and off the external ports to save power. You might want to go into the bios of the laptop. (Press DEL, or press F10, or Press F12, depends on bios) Look for something about enabling or disabling the serial port on the laptop. Make sure it is enabled. They also sometimes allow for you to map the Port to a specific IRQ and base address. Make sure the defaults are being used.

Com1 is typically address 3F8-3FF and IRQ 4. That may be the defaults the tuner software is expecting.
 
Computers suck

Well I've dug through the Tuner program files until I found Port = COM1 listed in the ini file.

The laptop is a Dell Latitude XPi CD

Phoenix ROM version BIOS Version 1.10 A03
I can't get into BIOS, tried the F keys and DEL, during startup and after with no effect. Is that normal? During boot-up there isn't a instruction on how to enter BIOS.

I went through the power saving settings and turned them all off but it made no difference.

How could I check to see if the port is functioning? Should I try to have it repaired?

Would a 40' cord from the house to the car be feasible?

When do things work out the way supposed to?

Vernon
 
Try this: go into the control panel, probably under settings on the START menu.

Click open "SYSTEM". Select the "Hardware" tab and click on "Device Manager".

Look for the listing for "Ports". See if "COM 1" is listed and click it open. See what the Device status is - or click on the "Resources" tab and select the box for "use automatic settings" if it is not checked.

If "COM 1" is not listed, click open the COM port # that is listed, and from one of the tabs you should be able to change the COM port back to COM 1.

I managed to do this on my gf's laptop through a bit of trial and error, and eventually it did work! The other option, maybe to try first, is after you see what COM port # is being used on your laptop, you can try to change the COM # in the .ini file in the tuner software to match it...

Like I said, I managed to try a whole bunch of stuff until I got it to work, but at the same time I would still advise caution because after all this is a computer and maybe I just got lucky. I don't want to just say "It's easy- just try a bunch of stuff!" and then your laptop crashes. But if you try the above steps you may be able to get the COM port to match what the software is looking for. Write down everything you do in case you need to change it all back again... Good luck!
 
That helps as Dell has good documentation on their website.

To enter the BIOS you need to press the combination FN+F1 on the keyboard immediately after you hear the first beep.

That unit has two infra-red ports on it. One in the front and one in the back, and either can be assigned to a com port. So you want to make sure the Serial port is assigned to COM1 and the infra-red ports are either disabled, or set to COM2 or/and COM4. COM1 and COM3 share an interrupt, and COM2 and COM4 share an interrupt. Keep the interrupt for COM1 free.

You can create a dell diagnostics disk from their website as well that can test the logic of the serial port to ensure it's functional as well.


http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/ptcd/document.htm
 
Joe and Mike you guys are great, this is crap I am clueless about and your advice is much appreciated.

I used it to locate the port settings like Joe said and as Mike described the I/R port was on 3 and sharing an interrup with 1. I disabled it, and rebooted but it still won't find the tuner board when plugged into com 1. I looked over the settings for com one in the locations Joe lead me to and the one he mentioned specifically was on automatic. I tried slowind down the input and output buffers to see if that would help but no. I tried resetting the port (COM1) settings to default, the only thing that changed was a "X start and X stop" thing. But again this didn't help. I rebooted after every change.

I'm giving up for tonight and will try the download for logic checking that Mike provided tommorrow. The thing is that there's a major flaw in this file that I've yet to conquer, I'm pretty sure it's the injector size now but pulling the computer out of the car every time is to much trouble. If the thing tommorrow doesn't help I'll just spend some time doing the in and out with the EEC this weekend until I get the problem ironed out.

Thanks,
Vernon
 
There is always another option. Move a computer to the garage and get a long serial cable.

You can also get parallel to serial converters to give you a new serial port if that one has died. There is also a DIGI device that will let you use a ethernet connection to access serial devices.

I don't know what kind of software you need to use. But if it is simple, and only needs Win95, old laptops with no CD drive, and low memory, only enough to run Win95 can be had cheap.
 
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