1QUIKTA

I took my car to my buddies to have him download the new pcmforless program onto the car. Well we overlooked one thing-the file downloaded as a EML file. Needless to say the PCM fried. I got ahold of Bryan and he directly emailed my friend the program and we downloaded that. His car is also a 94 and he uses LT1 edit. His car is temp. down, so he loaned me his PCM. He did a read on it and saved his programming. So we preceded to download my program-it ran fully and said 100% complete. Well the fans never kicked off and the SES light was blinking like crazy. We waited several minutes and they never quit. We tried to start it and what do you know that one is fried also.
What are my options here and why did it fry his? The program was supposed to be non VIN specific. And he did load it in a true DOS mode. Any input?

Thanks,
Chris

97 WS6 T/A Conv

I find it strange that Flash Program could locate a EML file. Seems like it needs to be a bin file to even be on the DOS menu. Did the EML have a ".bin" extension? I know none of this helps your issue I'm just curious. I would have guessed you didn't turn the key off after upload but you stated the fans never turned off and the SES light was flashing so now I don't have a clue as to what happened in your case. This is the first I have heard of this problem.

How is the condition of your car battery? Were you running an electric waterpump while the PCM was uploading (pulling more draw from the battery) Did you use an A/C source for your laptop or did you run that off of the car battery too? Seems like none of that would matter if the program indicated 100% complete but something to consider for next time.

I will tell you that when you get your PCM replaced make sure you get the PCM with a socket installed that way if you fry your pcm again all you have to do is replace the chip and try again, no more shipping back and forth. If you get it through Bryan have him program the PCM while he has it.

1QUIKTA

I don't have an electric waterpump and my battery had a full charge when we started. The laptop was plugged into his garage electricity. I saw a post that stated the old tunercat progs could do this because of a bug (the fans and SES light flashing). That could explain that one. I also read another post about having 2 tries to flash a pcm. Is that true?
I would email Bryan for some help and suggestions, but he is out of town for dyno tuning until the 8th.

madwolf

I could fix and socket your pcm for $60 + shipping (and refundable core charge if you want me to send you one right now)
Or I can just fix the pcm for $45 + shipping. I have working pcms in stock so I could send you one even today if need be.

madwolf

BTW, I thought you were asking about where you can fix the pcm. To answer your other questions, I've had several occurences like the ones you're describing. For some of them I don't have a clue myself, but the others were because the wrong file was uploaded, which I bet is your case as well. You most likely saved something else, not the actual file, and you must have some beta version of tunercat that doesn't check the file integrity and allowed you to upload the file as is.

Both pcms are corrupted and require removal of the chips and reprogramming. I can guarantee you that.

Dr.Mudge

Always make sure you upload a BIN from Tunercat or an LT1 Edit file from LT1 Edit, the T and M chip data are reversed in the two files. If you want to use an LT1 Edit file, save it as a BIN first when using Tunercat FLSHPROG.

DOOM Master

I would definitely agree that your PCM is fried. Your only option now is to have someone (like Madwolf, who I've heard does a good job of both programming and fixing PCMs), fix the PCM. You might as well have it socketed while you are at it, since if you are going to be doing programming, you will probably end up frying the PCM again. It's very common. If you know your way around a soldering gun, you can do it yourself. If you don't, have someone else do it. This isn't something you should do if you don't know exactly what you are doing. Like Mudge said, make sure any file you upload is a BIN file if you are using Tunercat or a LT1 file if it's LT1Edit.

1QUIKTA

We changed the file to BIN, but forgot about the file type and it saved it as a EML. The second one went perfectly, so we thought, it has the exact problems as mentioned in the TunerCat letter posted in another thread. SES light flashes erratically and fans won't stop running.
I checked the voltage on the battery today and it was 12V and that was after 2 programming sessions.
Ion, sent you some mail.

Thanks for all the help,
Chris

turbo_Z

why did you change the file? was is a .lt1 before?? if you got it from bryan then it was a .bin so i dont understand why you changed anything.

it might be worth your while to buy a PCM incase this happens again. i have found a couple on ebay for $50 in the past.. just got one today for $50 infact because of a screw up i had a few weeks ago.

Ion will fix you up good. got my car running after i somehow downloaded a corrupt file into my PCM but didnt know this until a total of 3 computers were fried

Dr.Mudge

EML being an encoded email yes? So you changed it on one machine and emailed it I assume.

SES light flashing and fans on because the PCM is nuked, it is not going to go away, 12v doesn't matter in this case because you didn't lose it do to a 11.8v battery, you lost it because the formatting of the file was incorrect. I use Outlook Express (evil I know) and it saves files properly, hmm.

1QUIKTA

He never changed the file type, just the name of the file. It was emailed to me and then to him and that email wouldn't pick it up and then he emailed it to his other addy. I guess in all the commotion it just messed the file type.

1QUIKTA

This file was freshly sent from Bryan on the 2nd PCM. The format was correct, we figured out the problem with the first before we did a second pcm. The program completed, but it just doesn't work.
The first pcm was the EML one.

madwolf

That's pretty much what happened with turbo_Z's program. It looked all good and you could read and examine every single table in it, but as soon as it was uploaded to the pcm, it would no longer respond. The programming would complete succesfully, including the verification at the end.

The other time this happened to me was just like the first pcm you guys killed. I was using the tunercat beta loader and being used to loading .lt1 files in the editor, I forgot to convert to .bin before uploading and chose "all files" instead and uploaded the .lt1. Needless to say, it was dead after this.
I contacted TC and informed him about this. He sent me an updated loader the same day which allowed for uploading .lt1 files and it also did an integrity check on the file to see if it's compatible before uploading. Worked great and I must say TC is really a GREAT guy to deal with! His customer support rocks!

BUT, unfortunately, even these precautions did not help in Brad's (turbo_Z) situation. I have never seen or heard of something like this before. He must've had a virus on his computer or a portion of that file somehow got corrupted at some point in time... who knows.