VCM Suite 1.2.0 Announcement

[Keith@HPTuners]

Attention: The update will be sent in .exe format to the e-mail address you used for paypal. It will be aproximately 1MB in size. It may be over. If your mail box is through site like hotmail, the 1MB file may be rejected. If you have an alternate e-mail address please PM me your full name, Paypal e-mail used, and the e-mail you would like for the update to be sent to.

Please make sure you have enough room in your in box for the new file.

Files will be distributed without new help files. We will distribute new help files hopefully next weekend. This may be done via a web download.

I would like to send the 1.2.0 distribution out monday afternoon.

Here is the 1.2.0 change log as it stands today:

VCM Suite Info:
Last known good com port is stored and tried first.
Com ports through 6 are now scanned for interface.
Increased VCM Info logged information.
VCM Info default log save path is nolonger location of vcm info.exe
VCM Suite Info is now located in both the flash and scanner programs under the Help menu. It is no longer its own utility.


VCM Flash:
Last known good com port is stored and tried first.
Com ports through 6 are now scanned for interface.
Get VCM Info is now called Get VCM ID's to avoid confusion.
Improved Get Cable ID in VCM Flash.
Read fail issues requiring PCM fuse removal resolved.
Cable status nolonger shows disconnected when you first startup the program.
Added VCM Suite Info under the help tab.


VCM Editor:
Added support for a few 99 Y-Bodies.
Corrected PE vs RPM table limits for certain vehicles.
Corrected PE vs ECT vs MAP limits for certain vehicles.
Added trans type to Info form.


VCM Scanner:
Last known good com port is stored and tried first.
Com ports through 6 are now scanned for interface.
Fixed common overflow error.
Fixed crash error when chosing record while scanning.
MAF PID's fixed.
Added space bar start/stop for scanning
Added VCM Suite Info under the help tab.



Thanks for your suggestions and support!

- Keith

[Billf6531]

This just gets better and better. Many thanks.

[jimmyblue]

Having it FTP-able off the Customer Login page would
probably cut your hassle factor, if that were "live", and
the email user limits would become a non-issue.

[Chris@HPTuners]

Having it FTP-able off the Customer Login page would
probably cut your hassle factor, if that were "live", and
the email user limits would become a non-issue.

LOL, it's like your reading our mind

We'll get there...

[Sonny]

just wonder if the update has been sent out yet.

[gfwc]

Do not think it has......

[Keith@HPTuners]

The updates where just sent via e-mail. They where 1.0 to 1.1 MB in size in .exe format. If you had any problems receiving your update please e-mail me directly.

Thanks!

[FDLS6]

Just got mine and installed. Awesome! It reads and writes the ecu just fine. No more invalid cable id errors Thanks a bunch. Interesting though.. it seemed to flip back and forth between normal and high speed mode. No biggie.. it seemed to handle it fine. Just curious... is there any risk of causing corruption, or "wearing out" the ecu from multiple re-flashes? I have a hunch I'm going to write to it many, many times

[jimmyblue]

EEPROMs all have a write cycle endurance limit but
they tend to be in the 10K+ cycles range, at worst-
case environmentals. So I wouldn't worry, unless you
tune / program like an infinite number of monkeys.

Falling back to low speed comms indicates that your
serial hardware or the management of its buffer are
marginal, too tardy to hang with full data rate. This
is what I was seeing on my 100MHz machine. USB
serial adapter? You might dig into whether there are
any optimization settings you can do (like allocating
more incoming buffer space, higher priority servicing
of data received, no sharing of interrupts (some
Windows versions think they're smart enough to
try), etc. but "Plug and Play", you get the plug where
they say.

[Casey]

Interesting though.. it seemed to flip back and forth between normal and high speed mode. No biggie.. it seemed to handle it fine.

Either your PC is on the ragged edge of being able to handle all of the read/write data or something is talking on your vehicles VPW bus and interrupting the read/write process.

Either way the software/hardware is finding ways around those communication errors. That's how its supposed to work.

As for wearing out the Flash chip by reading and writing to it too many times.... not in your lifetime


Ken

[FDLS6]

Thanks guys.. yeah, I thought it may have been a silly question about re-flashing too much, but thought I'd ask I was stuck in the magnetic tape world Well, my pc is a p3 650 with 196megs, straight serial connection. I'm not too worried about the switching back and forth from high to low speed. I could have had a hung process in the background that was taking resources.. If it continues to happen, i'll take a closer look at my serial port options.

[mrkrad]

Neat thing bosch ecu's do is for all ram/rom writes they double store the info, and use two's complement on every read/write and fault the ecu if anything goes wrong. Very smart.

So you guys at hptuners figure out how to have a high/low switch chip yet? Interface an unused input to dynamically switch say timing and fueling maps?

then we could have like two payloads on one chip. Would make tuning twice as fast or say a 100 octane/93 octane mode or for boost heads/etc more flexibility.

ie nitrous map that retards timing on the fly when the arm switch is hit.

That would rock. You could do something really fancy like multiple modes including security (no start), valet (reduce power mode ala wife mode), high octane, low octane).

That would kick the piss out of the other products. Tuning is one thing but if you can add more features that would rock.

the bosch cars use the cruise stalk, and then the SES light blinks at a rate to show the user what mode they are in.

I'd buy that for a dollah

[jimmyblue]

I've tried to dig up a means of triggering the Normal /
Performance mode select, so far all indications are
that it is a serial data command from the BCM. GM
might have hidden some kind of "secret dance step"
in the F-body BCM/PCM combo but I have yet to find
any good info, and not for lack of looking.

But maybe some code-disassemblin' guys can run it
down... all those Performance tables going to waste,
is a shame....

[mrkrad]

how well does the scanner fair with key off/key on's.

like if i want to log and im staging and accidently (oops) stall the car, i don't want to hold up the line when i restart. same with cold/warm start logging. There will be alot of work to get it from stalling and alot of restarts.

does the logger behave well with key off/key on restarts?

that was my biggest peave with efilive scanner.

[Keith@HPTuners]

Scanner will not re-start if it loses communications, its an issue we will fix in the future versions.