I was wondering if anyone ever had any problems with a home made interface cable. I dont mean problems with it not working, i mean problems where the computer on the car ends up being killed.

As of now i am under the impressoin that the only way to kill the computer by programming is if when its uploading and the battery on computer dies?

Last question: if the cable is built wrong it just wont work right, it wont screw anything up will it.

last question number 2: The max232 method is the best way right?

Thanks!

Oh and just so you know, when i searched i couldnt find any of these answers, much others but not these...

 

Due to the fact that there is someone who has put the time and money into making these, there probobly is not going to be a big response on this thread. However, if you mis wire the rs232 connector it will not harm your pcm or computer/laptop. It will just simply not work. I have purchased the cable from AKMS and dissasembled it and it is very easy to make yourself if you are knowledgable enough on computer equipment. But with that being said I will not help you with building your own cable due to the fact that this would be taking business away from a sponsor on this site that has worked very hard to get where he is at today.

So with that information. If your brave enough go ahead and try making a cable. You will be out 25 bucks or so. Just my .02 cents.

Good Luck.

 

its about 30 bux and a month of finding the parts because Radio Shack never has what you need and you have to send off for the Rs232/max232 chip. plus you have to find someway to cover it and make a connector for the aldl connection, mine is about as rigged as you can get, no cover so the capacitors and all the guts are showing and i just stick wires into the aldl....but it works. the AKM guy is a great guy to deal with and if you want to do it right, get a cable from him, like the last post said, he deserves it

 

I've had no problems with my homemade cable.

Or the cable comes unplugged. Or windows crashes. Or you start another program and windows gets distracted. Or the battery in the car dies. Or you rub your feet on the carpet and give it a nice static shock. Probably lots of other ways.

If you connect the wrong things together on the ALDL or from the ALDL to the laptop it could possibly hurt either the car or the laptop.

I think that if you're insecure about it, or you don't understand the circuit, then you should probably buy a prebuilt cable.

MAX233 is much nicer than a 232.


If you're going to play with it much, then eventually you are going to kill a PCM. Budget now for the cost of recovery and preferably socketing the chip.

If you're just going to program it once, to fix fans or whatever, then the odds are in your favor that you won't kill the PCM.

 

My total time was about 1.5 hrs including 1 hr to run to Fry's for a USB cable. Total cost was $6, which was for that cable.

Of course, I already had the other parts lying around.

 

I didn't spend anything either. Has been working fine for a couple of years now.

 

Let me tell you the biggest killer of PCM's that a lot out there may not even realize. POOR CONNECTIONS! Ask me how I know. I have the AKM set up, and I killes my computer so many times that I ended up socketing it, along with a back up, and I now reflash my own chips. But I finally found cause, and it was bad cable connections. Specifically at the AKM pc board. It was the cable from the ALDL connector to the AKM pc board. I eventually had to hard solder the connections at both ends. I would get half way through programs and it would lose the connection and error killing my PCM. Before I soldered them, I had about a 20% success rate. After it's about 99%. Would have been 100% until tonight and I started seeing errors again. The car has sit for about 2 months during a supercharger install. I went to program it (I do reads first) and it would never establish comm with the PCM. I still have the removable cable from the AKM pc board to my laptop. Once I disconnected it and reconnected it, all the errors went away and I did a few reads and a program. Looks like i'll have to hard solder that end of the AKM pc board and the cable. So hope that helps you. If I had to give AKM cables some advice, i'd recommend hard wiring the cables to their pc board on the kits that are sold as assembled units. I think theres just too many loose connections due to sections of cable and pc board for something thats this sensitive during programming. Also, if your using a laptop, you should use a laptop that you only use for programming. Load it with bare bones windows and lose all the un-necessary programs. Shut off all your power saving and screen saver stuff too. Hope the info helps you.

Ken R. 95Z

 

The 30 bux was included the board from akm and the random parts i got and the cable to go from 9pin serial laptop to 25 pin connector on my cable. i dont have random capacitors and resistors laying around, plus i had to get the titanium (?i think) capactitors or whatever i figured why not get the best, lol