Hey all. So think I got the issue with the Incorrect message sent errors during programming fixed. If you don't know, My PCM 3 times due to that. Looks like it was all related to the connection between my cable and the ALDL connector. Last PCM I lost, I couldn't get it to read at all. Kept erroring. The only thing I did is disconnect it from the ALDL, reconnect it and all of a sudden, read after read. So I decided to hard wire my cable to the back of the ALDL. Although it's now permanantly in my car, the connection is as good as it's gonna get now that everything is soldered. I did a few reads after that with no problem. Then I tried a program. It programmed and finished. First time it actually worked by the way. Only problem is I was using Tuners version 1.98. If you don't know by now, Tuner has descovered a bug in this version and if your a registered user of Tuner, you should have an e-mail on it by now. Anyway, this bug bit me. I finally get a program to work and now the PCM is gone again because of the bug. Tuner says you can recover, but I couldn't because I couldn't communicate with the PCM anymore. Other cases may be different though. Anyway, my recomendations to you guys using Tuner is this, I would strongly suggest that you hard wire your cable to your ALDL if you can for a really good connection and also update your Tuner version to 1.99. It's already on there web site. My PCM's are off to TunerCat for repair by the way. They were extreamly helpful and understanding in trying to get things worked out and it looks like I might have things smoothed out finally. I'll find out when I get them back. If you continue to need help with Tuner, contact them. There very friendly and helpful and are more then willing to work with you to correct things in anyway they can. Will give another update when i'm back up and running.

Ken R. 95Z

 

Sounds good that you got your problem fixed, roguedriver. I still think that both fan relays and the ABS relay were my problem, but who knows... cause everytime I connected I got a good read at least once (without jiggling or jouncing the ALDL cable.) How come your cable couldn't get a good connection? Mine seems to be able to do it just fine. Also, when you got everything to work right, did you pull any of the fuses or did the fans run the whole time you were reading/writing to the PCM?

Either way glad to hear you have your problems solved and sorry about the other PCM gone bad (due to a different reason this time, thankfully not of your own fault .)

 

I'm still surprised when I hear of this happening, as I've flashed probably over 100 times and the only two times it failed were due to the laptop battery dying during the flash (not TC's fault obviously).

What kind of cables are you guys using?

 

I'm using an AKM cable that is less than a month or two old. But I don't think the problems I've been having are due to the laptop or cable, but just that the battery was dying down during the process.

 

A valuable post, because YES you do NOT want noise in the line at all, you need a GOOD connection.

This is likewise why I do NOT move in the car, and usually put the laptop on the passenger seat. If its hot I pop a T top off the car, but I do not use anything with power (windows), and I dont open doors or do anything risky. Is it overly cautious? Sure it is, but it has kept me with the same PCM for over 100 writes. Security is paranoia and being overly cautious, if a scenario is minutely possible then you have to take it into consideration.

I never hard wired mine in but that is a good idea, and will make you almost immune to noise problems from jostling the cable, next step is to make sure that you have the screws tightened down a little bit in the laptops serial port to make sure that end of the cable doesn't jostle around. It does NOT need to be tight, and shouldn't be (you'll back out the screw holders eventually), just enough so that it doesn't come out, a couple quick turns will do it.

Sometimes I just put my laptop on a T top, and program from there, as long as there is no large amounts of direct sunlight on the laptop that could possibly overheat it and shut it down (again, even if riduculous it COULD happen, you never know).

 

Blackcamaro, don't know why my cable wasn't making a real good connection, but if your not hard wired, you have to realize that you never have a connection thats gonna be 100%, not even soldered if you've done a bad solder job, but hard wired in my case was definitly better then just plugging in. I programmed with the relays in. Just so you know, when you read or program, your fans should never be running all the way through. They should just kick on and off really quick at the beginning and end of programming and reading. The only reason I started pulling them was because I was doing so many read attempts to test stability, that my battery eventually went dead, or close to it. Enough to where the car wouldn't start and I had to jump it. If your still getting the errors, I would still look at connection or Laptop issues. After all the testing i've done, i'm pretty comfortable that most issues are caused by one of the two. And if I remember right, reading tunercats trouble section, Tuner should error for low system voltage if that issue comes up.
JSK333, i'm using a cable from AKMcables also. Although I put it together myself with there kit, Andrew tested it and said it was perfectly although I couldn't ship my car to him also to test the connection between the car and the cable, which it looks like what it turned out to be. Go figure.
Dr.Mudge, you make all good points about connections and moving things around during programming. It's always better to be safe then sorry. But then again, there is that one instance in one of my other posts where I was getting good reads over and over and purpously tryed to error it out by jiggling cables, running other programs on my laptop, turning on headlights, radio, even air conditioning all at the same time, but could never get it to error. Pretty weird, but i'm with you, the more stable everything is, the better off you are and it's better to be safe then sorry. All good advice.
My PCM's are already off to Tuner for repair. I never could recover from the 1.98 version bug and reprogram it. After that, it never would communicate with the PCM. I'll repost an update after getting them back and let everyone know what happens. If anything, I've learned a hell of a lot in the past month about programming and things you can run into. It just has to be smooth sailing from here.

Ken R 95Z

 

Unless 1995 made a change, this is not true, my car has the fans on THROUGHOUT the read and write process and this is GMs way of saying the CAR is doing something, either during a SES or a program/read, if yours only does it partially I would raise a large eyebrow and say WTF was that?

I pulled my relays always for this reason, I have talked to Tunercat about this and suggested they offer a way to disable this, LT1 Edit does NOT turn the fans on for purposes of battery save, if it only came on for a few seconds at a time it would not matter very much except power drop during that period.

 

Just lettin' everyone know I'm taking in all the info in this post and next time I read (it's been too cold for the computers to do anything lately,) I'm gonna closely look at the connection between the PCM and the laptop. Roguedriver, when you hardwired it, can you further explain your setup? Do you have the wire that goes to the laptop just sitting somewhere or did you make another connection that you disconnect and take the cable out of the car?

I also agree with Dr. Mudge, I have a '95 Formula and using TunerCat the fans stay on all the time during a read... I'd also assume they stay on during a write, but I haven't attempted to write the PCM because of this hysteria of losing my PCM that's been going around... I'll try it soon though.

 

I have never heard of a car that turns the fans off at any point until completion AND reset of the PCM, during a write, so this is interesting news to me.

 

Blackcamaro, I hard wired the cable by removing the ALDL connector, removing the 3 wires from the connector and piggybacking the 3 cable wires to the top of the ALDL wires and soldering them, then put the pins back in the ALDL and reinstalled the ALDL connector. If I removed the cable, it would have to be just the 9 pin serial cable part of the whole cable, but i'll probably just stuff the cable behind the console. Dr.Mudge, its true about my fans. Weather it's supposed to do it or not, mine only come on for a second while establishing communication. This is during reading and my only program. I guess I should check on that, but a lot of my reads were successful in that instance. I'll e-mail Tuner to see what the scoop is. Wonder how everyone elses fans work while programming or reading. I'll make a post...
Ken R 95Z

 

Ken, that sounds like a wierd tech issue, maybe SteveR or Andrew (who seems very busy still ) would have a clue, I really am not sure what in the world that could be since I fully assume your fans work normally all other times.

Wiring? PCM quirk? Hmm

 

Some more interesting news...my 95 also clicks the fans on momentarilly while in read/write. Rogue you are not alone.
Come to think about it, doesnt the HPP also do this?

 

LT1 Edit doesn't do it so its fully possible that Hypertech doesnt either. Sounds though like Tunercat now put that function into the updated FLSH utilities.