Direct Scan fried my ecm, is it possible?

[jmidolo]

So, I take the car to the track tonight...basically the 2nd time I've driven it since last October. Last October I raced it, first outting with DS. So, I go to the track tonight, hook up DS...SES light comes on solid, car runs like poop, stalls when ya give it gas in Park. WTF. Tried backing off the DS to ECM ribbon cable, maybe I have it in too far...no difference. So I try a different chip, same thing. WTF is going on here. I used this chip last October, nothing is different. I reset the ECM, tried again..no differnce. Finally, onto my last chip and it works. BTW, the other 2 chips did not work even w/DS NOT connected. I don;t know why. So I get this one chip to work. Try hooking DS up again. This time, different problem. My laptop is a dual boot. In win2k, DS just hangs when you try to go to real time scan. In win98 is says it cannot detect DS Hardware.

So, I have 2 problems. #1, could DS have messed up my ECM? Luckily this was my spare ECM I mod'd for DS. I came home, popped in my stock ECM, all 3 of my chips that gave me probs all work fine!!

#2 What's up with direct scan and not being able to see the hardware, and/or hanging when it tries to scan, could there be an issue with the box, which may have damaged my ECM in the 1st place??

Any help. I'm going to send this same msg to Tom, maybe he can help too and post my results.

Joe

[JDEstill]

Isn't there an issue with putting the cable on backwards? I seem to remember a warning not to hook the cable up to the ecm backwards, that it could hurt things, but I'm a little hazy on that.

John

[jastrckl]

DS needs direct access to the parallel port. win2k/xp/etc don't let that happen. it shouldn't be an issue in win98 but maybe you stumbled onto something weird. I always use a DOS boot disk to run DS.

[turbojimmy]

Something similar happened (running crappy w/ the SES light on) to my car when I first hooked the DS cable up, but unhooking the cable from the ECM fixed it. I figured I didn't have things lined up properly. Once I verified the car would run w/out the DS hooked up I hooked the cable back up and it was fine.

I don't know why, but my laptop won't boot right with the DS-connected parallel cable hooked up. It's a Win98 machine and it will hang when I try to boot to a DOS prompt. If I leave the cable unhooked it's fine. Don't know if it's DS-related or something funky with the port on the machine. It was like that with the old version of T-Link, too (it's an old laptop).

I'd ditch that ECM and try another - they're cheap and easy to get.

Jim

[jmidolo]

Kent replied to me, not sure where I got Tom from.

Anyways. LIke someone mentioned...DOS only. I thought I used it in 98 last yr with no prob, but Friday it would hang while booting into 98 w/DS hooked up. Not a huge deal, The laptop is only for scantool only so I will make a DOS boot.

ECM..yea, I think it's definatlely flaked out at this point. Will look for another or mod my orig. one.

Joe

[Eric Marshall]

Take a small pin and bend out the tabs in the ECM chip socket so they make better contact with the chip pins. The tabs in the socket tend to get bent in over the years and don't make good contact with the chip anymore.
If that doesn't work then the ECM could be toast.

[turbojimmy]

LIke someone mentioned...DOS only. I thought I used it in 98 last yr with no prob, but Friday it would hang while booting into 98 w/DS hooked up.

Mine will hang with DS hooked up, but I just boot into 98 w/out it hooked up. Then I can launch DS from the 98 desktop (after having created a shortcut) and plug in the cable.. It works fine that way.

HTH,
Jim