No MegaTune Communication.. read the sticky.. out of ideas

[srvblues00]

I am running MS I PCB 3.0 in my 88 Mustang. I got the engine running about 3 months ago, but have not been able to tune it. I was out of town for some training, and am just now getting back to start tuning it. While I was gone I noticed a new MSnSE version was released, so I wanted to upgrade in order to start with the latest software. Ever since I upgraded to MSnSE 029q, I have not been able to communicate with MS while the engine is running. Every now and then I can communciate with it key on engine off. I have tried Megatune versions 2.25b710 beta and the 2.25 final/stable release. Neither is able to communicate.

I have a USB to serial cable that I have used all along to load tunes, load MSnSE embedded code, etc. With the MSnSE 024x code, I was able to use my laptop to communicate with MS and datalog.. it did often crash or lock up, but if I played with it and talked sweet to it, I could eventually get something done.

I also have a Red Cheif PCMCIA serial port. It works great with my Garmin GPS and Delorme Street Atlas. I can track a drive/route in real time on the map on my laptop, so I know the port is working reasonably well.

For both the USB to serial cable and the PCMCIA serial port, I have tried speeds of 9600 and 115200, but neither made any difference. I tried setting the buffers to the lowest setting, but that didn't do anything. I then disabled FIFO for each device, but that didn't help either. I have tried reassigning the COM ports to different ports; no difference. I downloaded the latest devices drivers I could find for my USB to serial cable; no help. I changed the writeBlocks = off to on, didn't make any difference. interWriteDelay was originally 0, but I made it even as high as 1000, and still no success.

I read the 10 page sticky thread on USB to serial converters. Nothing really jumped out at me.. I don't know how to check what USB serial adapter I have. It is an ebay special, but the drivers that came with it were Prolific, which is what most people said worked for them. The cable used to work, although poorly. My PCMCIA serial port is a Red Cheif, and again, a member commented that he had a Red Cheif port working well.

I checked the DB9 pins on MegaSquirt. Pin 1 does have 5 volts. Pin 2 had 9.74 volts. Pin 3 showed nothing on the DMM, but that is the RX (IN) pin, so that kinda makes sense. Pin 5 is a good ground, no voltage drop to the case. Pin 9 does have 5 volts.

I am having a funny problem at > 75 KPa, so I was hoping to get some nice detailed logs. My old logs only got 2 or myabe 3 datapoints per second at best.. I am looking for more resolution in the logs. My old setup with the USB cable and MSnSE 024x would only work with a communication interval of 300 or more, and it still would crash sometimes.

So.. if anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate some input. I have done all I know and I am out of ideas. I need some help.

[dkelsom]

Hello Srvblue00 last week I have done the same thing gone from 2.16 code to2.25 code and I can get it to comunicate on 2.25 doctor but thats it I thought it might be some thing to do with windows xp pro but I don't know I have listed my question as comms error.
Dave..

[srvblues00]

Well, go figure.. got it working this morning. The portCheck.exe utility I found in another thread was pretty helpful. With that, I realized that it wasn't recognizing my PCMCIA card on the default port of 10. I changed it to COM4, and then portCheck found the port and read the MS signature. Yesterday I tried COM1 and COM4, but it didn't work. So, I'm not quite sure what the problem was, but at least it is now working on the stim. Hopefully it will still work in the car.

However, after all this and getting my PCMCIA serial card to work, I am still only getting 4 or maybe 5 points per second in my datalogs. What does it take to get some resolution? I guess I can use burst mode, but still, it seems to me that it should easily be capable of more than that. I am using a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, 256mb RAM, 2.4GHz Celeron, and WinXP.