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General Anyone still burning EPROM chips?

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Spleen8urLSX

5+ Year Contributor
712
612
Dec 26, 2017
Elyria, Ohio
Seen code editing discussed in another thread but didn’t want to thread jack, but find the topic interesting and wondering who’s still editing code/burning chips?

Not a service I’m looking for at this time and doubt I’d ever need, but just taking interest in the lost art form per say. I remember back in the mid 2000’s when I got into these cars laptops were still expensive and things like ECMlink and AEM EMS V1 were around but not obtainable by many, most of the “fast” guys in the area that had exceeded what they could do with an SAFC or MAF translator alone were mostly utilizing a chip burnt for whatever they were using.

By the time I took any interest in code editing 9 years ago ECMLink had become much more practical and obtainable and it was already a pretty dead way of doing things. I figured if anyone is still doing it this is a way to chime in and discuss and maybe keep it alive a little longer.

Not to be paranoid but with the way the world has been and constant supply chain issues this might be a viable option for those with simpler set ups if certain things aren’t available in a few years but sadly there may not be anyone left doing it.

Again, starting conversation more so on the curiosity of the subject as I find it interesting.
 
I have the stuff to do it but my current car uses DSMLink and it is superior in many ways. I can remember burning EEPROM's at the track for myself and a friend and while the cars ran well, it was much more painful than DSMLink.

Also yes, you are being paranoid with supply chain issues. The bigger issue is that Mitsubishi isn't making many of the parts required to keep the cars running.
 
I have the stuff to do it but my current car uses DSMLink and it is superior in many ways. I can remember burning EEPRPM's at the track for myself and a friend and while the cars ran well, it was much more painful than DSMLink.

Also yes, you are being paranoid with supply chain issues. The bigger issue is that Mitsubishi isn't making many of the parts required to keep the cars running.
I use ECMlink myself and it is OBVIOUSLY easier and more pain free, wasn’t saying that it’s an easier way. And paranoid or not remember a year or so ago when ECMlink was looking at their last few chips and that was that? Almost was the end of being able to get ECMlink on the new market but luckily they found some more. Last I knew LinkECU’s plug and plays were still on back order as well with a few month lead time due to lack of supply to be able to build them. There’ll always be options for us but cost and availability. Yeah these cars are getting harder and harder to get parts for, I’m living that as many of us are, but the point is more of a curiosity of who’s still doing it, not a “why isn’t anyone doing this”, more for the sake of conversation and trip down memory lane. I’ll be real ECMlink has been fine for me but the majority of my set ups a burnt chip would’ve been just as sufficient wether people want to hear it or not.


Was hoping Kurt drops by for this one.
 
Dave at foreign muscle or whatever his business is called now also has extensive experience with burning EEPROM chips. I’ve never burned chips but I’ve used the Ostrich extensively. Is there anything specific you’re needing help with or just a general thing?
 
Dave at foreign muscle or whatever his business is called now also has extensive experience with burning EEPROM chips. I’ve never burned chips but I’ve used the Ostrich extensively. Is there anything specific you’re needing help with or just a general thing?
Just more in general to see who’s still doing it, don’t know why I find it fascinating as I’d likely never be able to figure it out even if the resources were still out there, but more so for the sake of conversation and the trip down memory lane as it worked well in its glory day.
 
Ever so often I play around to refresh the brain cells.

I don't know if my EPROM burner still works after the Mice nested in the 386 machine that hosted it but I can still program the EEPROM and Flash based 27XXX series parts with the USB programmer. There are a couple of Ostrich's on the ECU shelves in the basement.

Almost all of the new activity on the DSM-ECU mailing list was from people who wanted handouts but didn't want to learn how to do it themselves. So I let it die.
 
Ever so often I play around to refresh the brain cells.

I don't know if my EPROM burner still works after the Mice nested in the 386 machine that hosted it but I can still program the EEPROM and Flash based 27XXX series parts with the USB programmer. There are a couple of Ostrich's on the ECU shelves in the basement.

Almost all of the new activity on the DSM-ECU mailing list was from people who wanted handouts but didn't want to learn how to do it themselves. So I let it die.
That’s the impression I got with it. It had seemingly went from a group of people who had figured it out for themselves to new comers that wanted those guys to tell them EXACTLY what to do and to essentially end up with a free tune out of the deal. Sadly we see that with many tuning platforms in todays age.
 
That’s the impression I got with it. It had seemingly went from a group of people who had figured it out for themselves to new comers that wanted those guys to tell them EXACTLY what to do and to essentially end up with a free tune out of the deal. Sadly we see that with many tuning platforms in todays age.

Just look at a lot of new threads here on Tuners. It’s happening in society as a whole. No one is willing to dig in and learn something anymore, they want it spoon fed and a YouTube video walkthrough guiding them step by step so they can fail at step one and move on to the next thing.


There was always the occasional “how do I turbo my 420a” post but these days it’s like “someone come change my oil for me I’m not gonna do it, it’s too difficult”.
 
Just look at a lot of new threads here on Tuners. It’s happening in society as a whole. No one is willing to dig in and learn something anymore, they want it spoon fed and a YouTube video walkthrough guiding them step by step so they can fail at step one and move on to the next thing.


There was always the occasional “how do I turbo my 420a” post but these days it’s like “someone come change my oil for me I’m not gonna do it, it’s too difficult”.
Which on the dsm Facebook pages turns into 20 adults arguing about what motor oil brand is better LOL
 
I use ECMlink myself and it is OBVIOUSLY easier and more pain free, wasn’t saying that it’s an easier way. And paranoid or not remember a year or so ago when ECMlink was looking at their last few chips and that was that? Almost was the end of being able to get ECMlink on the new market but luckily they found some more. Last I knew LinkECU’s plug and plays were still on back order as well with a few month lead time due to lack of supply to be able to build them. There’ll always be options for us but cost and availability. Yeah these cars are getting harder and harder to get parts for, I’m living that as many of us are, but the point is more of a curiosity of who’s still doing it, not a “why isn’t anyone doing this”, more for the sake of conversation and trip down memory lane. I’ll be real ECMlink has been fine for me but the majority of my set ups a burnt chip would’ve been just as sufficient wether people want to hear it or not.



Was hoping Kurt drops by for this one.
The whole industry has been struggling with supply since 2020 and it may get worse before it gets better as the USA tries to move production back here. I have a guy that I call when I need hard to find parts like SFP's from a particular OEM and it might take him a month, but he always ends up finding a stash of 1000 in some warehouse somewhere to save the day.

I've got the burner and some chips if they are ever needed. I would have to figure out how to edit them again. The most important thing was the fuel and timing map edits. I also have notes for putting an EVO or 2G ecu into a 1G should that ever be required.

In my opinion, the biggest risk to loosing ECMLink is just moving on to more profitable work and/or retiring. If that were to happen, I'll probably just go full standalone. So that is yet another option.
 
Just look at a lot of new threads here on Tuners. It’s happening in society as a whole. No one is willing to dig in and learn something anymore, they want it spoon fed and a YouTube video walkthrough guiding them step by step so they can fail at step one and move on to the next thing.


There was always the occasional “how do I turbo my 420a” post but these days it’s like “someone come change my oil for me I’m not gonna do it, it’s too difficult”.
Its always been like that with the less experienced people. I can remember back in the mid 2000's when people didn't want to learn how to do ecu chips, they just wanted one for the cost of a chip. The same was true when I started doing the Evo ecu stuff, people would jump into the threads where we were talking about code and want to be taught how to use the software.
 
The whole industry has been struggling with supply since 2020 and it may get worse before it gets better as the USA tries to move production back here. I have a guy that I call when I need hard to find parts like SFP's from a particular OEM and it might take him a month, but he always ends up finding a stash of 1000 in some warehouse somewhere to save the day.

I've got the burner and some chips if they are ever needed. I would have to figure out how to edit them again. The most important thing was the fuel and timing map edits. I also have notes for putting an EVO or 2G ecu into a 1G should that ever be required.

In my opinion, the biggest risk to loosing ECMLink is just moving on to more profitable work and/or retiring. If that were to happen, I'll probably just go full standalone. So that is yet another option.
I’ve seen some of your older posts in regards to using the Evo 8 ecu in a 1g along with things from others over the course of the years, I’m real surprised with availability and simplicity this hasn’t become more common. I know a few years back someone was making nice jumper harnesses and selling them on Facebook but it seemed the market wasn’t really there for them to continue doing so. To me this would be appealing as Evo 8 ECU’s are still plentiful and affordable (if you look in the right places) and isn’t really more or less capable than ECMlink but using a 2g or Evo 8 style knock sensor is appealing as those are still widely available while the 1g ones aren’t so much and ECMlink unfortunately can’t provide the capability to use anything but the 1g knock sensor with a 1g ECU. I have a feeling if anything ever happened with ECMlink we’d see an uptick in that. That’s another system I’ve seen used but never got to play with myself.
 
In Japan, there are still shops/people who do that. And I believe some still sell their 3D Rom/MAP editor software and the things you need for rom tuning.
I always suspected this. I don’t know about now a days but a few years ago and earlier it always seemed as even Mitsu ECU’s aside they used entirely different approaches on engine management. It seems as if Apex’i stuff (beyond the safc) and Greddy E manage was way bigger over there amongst several platforms but this is going off reading magazines in my younger days. Can’t ever recall ever reading of AEM really being used over there on Evo’s and only seen mostly people from this side of the globe stationed over there and such using ECMlink on older Evo’s but again because I didn’t see it doesn’t mean anything. However chip burning and sometimes backing it up with an safc seemed to be much more prevalent in Japan longer than it was here. Interesting to think about.
 
I've been writing EPROM & EEPROM, building dev boards for the MCU, reading off internal ROMs from the Non-eprom ECUs, writing dissasemblers and adding processor types to Ghidra, working on an emulator, imaging the die of the MCU, and a whole bunch of other things while releasing it all for completely free. I'd love to see a resurgence of DSM-ECU work in the open-source (hardware) way, and have been attempting to build something of a bootstrap for that over the past couple years.
You bet I'm going to hype these kind of things, because it has been kinda lonely working on this stuff.😅 Besides talking to James (rhinopower.org) which has been awesome of course.
I'll be here to answer questions and work on stuff. I feel like you can figure out who else will be too based on who is already in this thread. :thumb:
 
I was making a few for customers a while back, but quit doing anything other than adding 2 steps pkelim and fuel cut elim. Had too many guys tell me x maf, z injectors, then "my car don't run". Check into it and they actually have h maf and k injectors. it was terrible.

My brothers gvr4 and my ggsx has an ostrich on it. my new race car will probably get an ostrich as well.

Maybe @Ludachris could make a stock code editing subforum. Would need some semi strict moderation to keep the bs away. No asking for edited bins, no posting edited bins, otherwise it'll be a wasteland of do my homework for me, or why doesn''t my car run anymore, instead of advancing, and keeping the craft alive.

I'll take a hard line on this, if you can't figure out how to do something trivial like add in pkelim, or nlts from any of the guides on the net, the chances of you doing any of this are slim to none.
 
I was making a few for customers a while back, but quit doing anything other than adding 2 steps pkelim and fuel cut elim. Had too many guys tell me x maf, z injectors, then "my car don't run". Check into it and they actually have h maf and k injectors. it was terrible.

My brothers gvr4 and my ggsx has an ostrich on it. my new race car will probably get an ostrich as well.

Maybe @Ludachris could make a stock code editing subforum. Would need some semi strict moderation to keep the bs away. No asking for edited bins, no posting edited bins, otherwise it'll be a wasteland of do my homework for me, or why doesn''t my car run anymore, instead of advancing, and keeping the craft alive.

I'll take a hard line on this, if you can't figure out how to do something trivial like add in pkelim, or nlts from any of the guides on the net, the chances of you doing any of this are slim to none.

I can definitely see that with the way things are these days, then of course they want to blame the guy that made the chip opposed to blaming themselves for not doing some basic research and instead going off what 3 owners ago told them. I can remember way back when it was much more common someone looking for a chip KNEW exactly what they had and it was a done deal.

I’d love to play around with it but seems a lot of the spoon fed info you really have to dig for these days and no one is really out there offering the service. Only reason I say it is if I had the knowledge to do it myself I’d love to try it, I might get my head bit off for saying it but sometimes I’d love to go back to logging with TMO or Tunerpro but with a chip. Even when I was doing so I had my car running EXTREMELY well on an SAFC (even though it was dated tech then) just using a logger, another good buddy of mine held on to the chip for many years before finally switching but the thing ran like a stock car even with no piggyback backing it up (good enough to go 10.96 with an hta68 in a FWD that was daily driven from April to November).

Maybe in the colder months I’ll start digging deeper.
 
If Luda does create a code/assembly section I also second the no politics thing.

I also would like an added rule though. That posting anything to it waives your rights to any code or etc you may post. So there’s absolutely no way to grab the code, compile it, and claim that it’s your intellectual property and charge money for it. Maybe make it where Luda/DSMTuners own it.

All views and preferences aside this contributed massively to the whole coding/dsm ecu scene dying. Several people all tried this with no success, where if it was just a strictly independent do your own thing, I feel it’d have become way more popular.
 
I've been writing EPROM & EEPROM, building dev boards for the MCU, reading off internal ROMs from the Non-eprom ECUs, writing dissasemblers and adding processor types to Ghidra, working on an emulator, imaging the die of the MCU, and a whole bunch of other things while releasing it all for completely free. I'd love to see a resurgence of DSM-ECU work in the open-source (hardware) way, and have been attempting to build something of a bootstrap for that over the past couple years.
You bet I'm going to hype these kind of things, because it has been kinda lonely working on this stuff.😅 Besides talking to James (rhinopower.org) which has been awesome of course.
I'll be here to answer questions and work on stuff. I feel like you can figure out who else will be too based on who is already in this thread. :thumb:
Not that I know much about it and I’ll openly admit a lot of it is foreign to me, but still seems like it’s pretty straightforward to learn about when the resources are available. Sadly, bastarddsm has an extremely valid point, with todays mindset it could essentially turn into people wanting others to do all the work for them without making any effort, instead just wanting someone to tell them EXACTLY what to input without paying someone for their work. In a way that way of thinking by many ruins it for those willing to learn and rightfully so, however a few of us still enjoy the learning curve and tinkering with things.
 
If Luda does create a code/assembly section I also second the no politics thing.

I also would like an added rule though. That posting anything to it waives your rights to any code or etc you may post. So there’s absolutely no way to grab the code, compile it, and claim that it’s your intellectual property and charge money for it. Maybe make it where Luda/DSMTuners own it.

All views and preferences aside this contributed massively to the whole coding/dsm ecu scene dying. Several people all tried this with no success, where if it was just a strictly independent do your own thing, I feel it’d have become way more popular.
I agree that’s a fantastic idea IF Ludachris would want to go through with it. I will openly admit I’m so dead set on going this route I’ve went as far as posting my ECMlink for sale as even if I don’t figure it out for myself I’d rather have a chip burnt and go from there, but even that being said Id like to see actual discussion on the topic and not just people looking for a hand out. If someone wants to pay someone for their services I feel that’s great too, but no “do the work for me for free” type deals.
 
I would love this. I’ve got a stockish fwd 1g. I’d like to do some mild mods but don’t really want to go ecmlink. I’m running a stock ecu with a socketed eprom and would love to able to burn my own chips as I mod. But I know next to nothing about this, hardware, software, what it takes, but would love to learn. Tuning my other car with ecmlink is my only experience.
 
I would love this. I’ve got a stockish fwd 1g. I’d like to do some mild mods but don’t really want to go ecmlink. I’m running a stock ecu with a socketed eprom!and would love to able to burn my own chips as I mod. But I know next to nothing about this, hardware, software, what it takes, but would love to learn. Tuning my other car with ecmlink is my only experience.
This is my thought process. This isn’t to say ECMlink isn’t a good product (doesn’t mean anyone HAS to like it either so we don’t start that debate) but for a pretty modest car the old chip method was the way to go. Pay for the chip from a reputable source letting them know what combo and such, send you the chip, pop it in and go. I know some guys were even willing to look at logs and perfect it a bit off that. My thought process is I miss that simplicity of those times, however I’d still like to attempt to learn for myself however I’m pretty sure a lot of the good writing on the subject matter sadly ceases to exist.
 
I miss that simplicity of those times
I kinda miss that moment, too. I still use 25 years old SAFC and ITC on my 2g.
I’d still like to attempt to learn for myself
Actually me too. I myself am not so familiar with the ROM tuning (That's how we call for burning chips in Japan), so recently I have been thinking to learn and do it myself as hobby.
Pay for the chip from a reputable source letting them know what combo and such, send you the chip, pop it in and go
I used do this with a senior tuner in Japan. I still have it. My name on the chips 😄 .
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
 
I kinda miss that moment, too. I still use 25 years old SAFC and ITC on my 2g.

Actually me too. I myself am not so familiar with the ROM tuning (That's how we call for burning chips in Japan), so recently I have been thinking to learn and do it myself as hobby.

I used do this with a senior tuner in Japan. I still have it. My name on the chips 😄 .
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Very interesting! Are those actual dsm ECU’s or from another Mitsu product? (More so curiosity)
 
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