ECUFlash - No Vehicle Interface

[DrGonzo]

Been working on a friends car building it back up to it's glory. It's a 96 3000gt and we have a ChromECU installed. We have the flash plug pinned to pin 57 just like the docs say. ECUFlash always throws the same "No Vehicle Interface" error in the bottom right corner. Evoscan connects and read/logs without issues so we know the main install is good and the drivers for tatcix are installed correct.

The Laptop we are running it on is a brand new Win8 machine. I have installed ECUflash outside of the programs files and I installed it as Admin and I even have it running as admin so i don;t think it is a permissions issue on Win8. We have uninstalled it an re-installed in about 5 times now and still the same error. I checked online and not seeing a whole lot on this. if anyone has any advise please let me know. We stood out there for 3 hours trying to get it to work freezing our asses off... LOL

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

Key is on and evoscan closed, right?

[DrGonzo]

Yep... Still no luck.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

Yep... Still no luck.

I suspect you still have an issue with the flash enable wire. It won't read without that either.

[DrGonzo]

Yeah, that is what we were thinking also. I played with the wire a bunch along with the connection and the 3.5mm plug and nothing. It just won't connect.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

Yeah, that is what we were thinking also. I played with the wire a bunch along with the connection and the 3.5mm plug and nothing. It just won't connect.

has the tactrix been tried on a different ecu/car? Its probably fine, but I'd want to make sure.

[DrGonzo]

The tatris works as we can read and log using ECUFlash. I don't know if that matters as far as flashing. Nobody local to test the flash capabilities of it. Nobody is running chrome locally around here.

[CoopKill]

Can you pop the box open, and check continuity from the tactrix end to the solder on the board?

[Jesters Deadd]

make sure the pin 57 goes all the way to the front of the plug.
If the pin has a tit on the bottom of it the tit can be shaved/cut off to help the pin seat.

[DrGonzo]

I have the pin in as far as I can get it. I can see that it is sitting as far forward as the rest of them.

Nest time I go over there I will pull the cover and check continuity between the 3.5mm Plug and the board to see if I indeed have a connection issues somewhere in the wires/plug. It will be easier doing it that way then assuming the plugs are all right.

[tom93vr4]

Also might check to make sure the tip of the plug (that plugs into the Tactrix) is not shorted to the base/outside/ground part of the plug. I had an intermittent 'can't read, can't write' problem for a while. Turned out the crimp part of the plug dug into the insulation far enough to sometimes short into the center conductor. Reworked the connection, worked fine since.

[Jesters Deadd]

I have the pin in as far as I can get it. I can see that it is sitting as far forward as the rest of them.

Nest time I go over there I will pull the cover and check continuity between the 3.5mm Plug and the board to see if I indeed have a connection issues somewhere in the wires/plug. It will be easier doing it that way then assuming the plugs are all right.

Check the front of the pin not the back.

[DrGonzo]

Yeah, the front as in the portion that plugs into the ECU side not the side with the wires coming out of it. I can see in the pin holes that the metal pin is as far forward as the rest of the pins.

[DrGonzo]

So we got to work on it a little bit today. First thing I did was pull the cover and do a continuity test on the flash pin. All good. So at his point I'm thinking the tatrix cable of Mitsubishi adapter is bad. Was going to have him send it to Abram to test as he is the only local I know that has Chrome ECU also.

Then I got to thinking, maybe it is his brand new laptop that is the problem. So I pulled out my old IBM thinkpad with Win XP on it and installed ECUFlash... Bam connected right up no issue. Attempted to do a flash and got a J2534 error or something "Communication error" and the progress bar stopped at 50% through the flash. So we are thinking we may have bricked the ECU now.... Quick searhcin on he forums and it looks to be something that happens from time to time. The big pain is that ECUFlash would not let us exit out of the program. You try to quite and it just keeps popping up a warning about "flash incomplete closing the program may render the ECU unusable". So killed the process and flashed the stock ROM back and it worked just fine. So we go and flash the custom tune on and it worked just fine... SO IDK what was up with the first error we got. We changed nothing between the first and last flash attempts.

So we now know the front O2 is dead and the TPS needs adjusting as it is not hitting the idle switch. Also found that every orifice on the throttle body is leaking through a pressure test... Luckily I just powder coated and rebuilt a throttle body that we will be swapping on. Plus a bunch of other odds and ends but at least now we know the ECU/Flash is good.

So this brings up a new question. Why will his brand new laptop not work. when I mean new I mean he bought it last week specifically for this as his old one will only work if plugged in due to a bad battery "not good for tuning on the fly". It's nothing fancy, just a standard cheap laptop, about $300. I want to say it's an Asus but my concern is that it is running windows 8.1. I cleaned it all out of the crap-ware that was installed, dropped Avast onto it along with Classic Shell so that it functions as a laptop not a fucking 16" mobile device with no touchscreen "POS Win 8". I installed both Evoscan and ECUflash as Admin in Win7 compatibility mode. Now ECUFlash did throw a DLL error which online searching looked to be the tatrix drivers. Now the tatrix drivers where installed before even attempting to install ECUFlash. I manually downloaded them from Tatrix site as we needed them to run EvoScan which works just fine, SO IDK what the hell ECUFlash's problem is not locating the drivers but it is definitely an ECUFlash/Driver issue.

[BlackStealth]

I'd return the new laptop back to the store for a refund, and go purchase a new battery for the old laptop (shop on ebay for cheap replacement batteries, about $40).

When there is a lot of flash changes, ie going from non-chrome rom to chrome rom, you really should have a battery charger hooked up (at maximum charging voltage). It's been reported some people have bricked their ECUs because of insufficient voltage.

Secondly, do we know what temperature rating the Tactrix 2.0 flash device is designed to run at? Most consumer electronics do not work below 0 degrees C, including laptops. When I build LCDBC I have to carefully search for industrial / millitary spec electronic components that can operate in cold temperatures, and pay a premium.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

As far as I know, if you actually ever brick an ECU it will say "fail to erase block" or something similar. I think the whole bricked ECU thing is way overblown. I've flashed mine, which even has a CPU from 1998 in it, about three hundred times without issue.

It seems like most guys with trouble have some homebrew wiring involved somewhere.

I have also had at least four computers with windows 8 doing the flashing.heck I have my venue 8 pro doing most of them, its an eight inch tablet.

[DrGonzo]

The car has a Jester ECU with his 96+ plug on it so no homebrew wiring. The rest of the wires are tatrix wires. It is not a wiring issue as I can plug by Thinkpad in running WinXP and it all works just fine. It's an issue with crappy Win8. Either UAC, Driver install path, or river incompatibility. We will most likely end up dumping Win8 for Win7 as it will be easier to do the re-install back to a good OS then try and figure out what crap Microsoft did to Win8 that is messing things up.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

Edit, I guess that might sound mean, but not trying to be. I don't give up easily and I wouldn't let windows 8 beat me is all.

People complain about security in windows and then complain when they make it hard to install unsigned or third party drivers, I'm not sure what Microsoft is supposed to do to please everyone?

Also, I wasn't there, so I don't know what you were doing at the time, but its bad to have ecuflash end evoscan open at the same time. Evoscan can lock the usb port up and eculfash says it can't connect until you close both and just open ecuflash. They both need exclusive access to the port, so it screws stuff up *sometimes* if you have both open at the same time.