Well guys, I'm happy using a desktop in the garage I was able to read it once, I let the engine run for no longer than a minute, and then it read twice in a row. Since I was not sitting in the car, I had a voltmeter on the battery under the hood and the voltage dropped from 13.5V after the car was running to 12.05V, where it leveled off and stayed at. And I know have 6 copies of the stock programming lol .

 

I'm watching this thread carefully since I too am close to trying pcm reprogramming. I'll follow the relay/battery voltage suggestions as called out. Now I have been using a little program in Win98 that helps me get a maximum amount of memory within windows. I use this for my cad and graphics programs. You can set up profiles and select at boot up. Anyway I know there are a couple of other programs that are similar. Look at this:
WSM

Jeff

 

IIRC, its 11.9v when the PCM will crap out under read/write, so BE CAREFULL if your already down to 12.05v.

Use Tunercat on a fresh bootup if your using the Windows stuff, you should NOT need a memory maximizing program at all on a fresh boot, unless you have TONS of crap loading at bootup. Many software programs like Real Audio etc load stuff at bootup nowdays unless you disable them, and frankly those type of programs **** me off, but that is how they try to keep you using them, by nagging you to death and slowing down your computer. I always disable unneccessary bootup programs.