Ive got TunerCat and all the scanning software..Heres the thing..

Sometimes it works greaat! Sometimes it wont work at all..
When using Freescan it will work for like 2-3 secs then stop..work 2-3 secs then stop..Other times it will work and keep running

What would cause my laptop(Dell 8100 w/ WinXP) to act like this? It wont let me read my PCM either..it just says error in sending so Im definatley not going to try sending a file to the PCM..
Anyone have any clues??

Im 100% sure the cable is working fine and if I do the hyperterminal test it works great..

Thanks

Cody

 

Try something other than Freescan. I dont know of anyone who got it work correctly.

I would recommend TTS Datamaster, its free for 20 recordings and it blows away everything else I've seen.

 

I had similar problems. Don't flash to your PCM until you feel you have everything 100%.

Got my laptop. Got software. Had Windows XP loaded on it, which isn't DOS based btw. And if you don't know, you need to read and flash your PCM from the actual DOS command prompt, not a DOS shell in Windows. The guy I bought the laptop from said the hard drive was sort of flaky, so he bought me a new one. So I was waiting on a new bigger hard drive... so this was only a temporary setup... and I had to test some stuff out anyways.

So while waiting, I read my PCM using PCMread, which is a free Windows program. I found it on some LT1_Edit site I think. It made a .lt1 file, which I converted to .bin for Tunercat. Worked fine. I got a feel for editing in Tunercat, but couldn't flash new files to my PCM since I didn't have DOS.

I also messed around with Freescan. Had a few problems. If you don't know, you need to start communiction on the upper left side of the Control tab. You shuld see some data readouts, data read and data sent, something like that. Well, if you did what I did, it will just read data, and you can see that its not sending anything. What you need to do is click interactive or whatever it is on the upper right hand side, and possibly force data. When you see both "sent and read" numbers chugging away, it should be working correctly. You can then log data, and click on the other tabs and view the live data.

So once I figured out how to work it, I still had problems. It was slower than crap. As soon as Freescan started communicating, it took about a minute to click to another tab, and another minute for the data to pop up. I'm still not sure why that happened.

So... then I got my new hard drive, and installed Windows 98, which is DOS based. I would have rather stuck with XP, but couldn't get a boot disk to work with the Tunercat files, etc. Anyways, in Win98, Freescan would not work. Actually, nothing would, at least not with the serial port! I also used the Hyperterminal test, and nothing came up. I thought my cable was toast.

But, in DOS, I used Kermit and the serial port worked just fine. So it was a Windows issue. After triple checking all the settings, we decided to mess in the BIOS. And thats where we had luck... we turned off all the other parallel and serial ports, since I don't use them.

After doing that, Freescan worked. And it worked without slowing down! I also now had DOS, so I read my PCM with the readprog to test it more. Error. Said something about security or some crap. So I tried it again. Worked just fine. Next day I decided, to use flshprog and flash a new file to my PCM. First time, error. Ran the program again, and it worked just fine.

Looking back, I may have tried to run the DOS programs too quickly... I didn't turn the key to ignition until it told me too, and waited only 10 seconds before (P)roceeding.

I hope some of this helps, your problems may be something else. I suggest trying the BIOS trick, and turning off all the ports except COM1 or whatever. Supposedly there is a Windows version of the Tunercat PCM flash program, so you might be able to stick with XP.

 

Everything works fine for me, P2/233 IBM ThinkPad w/ Win98 using TunerCat and FreeScan. I plugged in the cable, opened the software, and got to work. TunerCat will soon release a Windows version of their PCM read/write utility so hang in there. I promise it works great.

BTW if you have a ScanMaster installed you may have problems w/ ALDL communications (as per Brent Frankers install notes).

 

Hmm...I do have the Win version of ReadPCM and it wont work at all I have disabled everything in BIOS cept COM1 also..Its just wierd sometimes it works fine and others it doesnt..I have never gotten it to read though..Ive tried in the Popup DOS window and the Windows version and neither worked..I did run Datamaster and it worked but this was one of those times Freescan was working fine..It would disconnect a few times but it would connect back w/in a few secs..

I also dont have a scanmaster

I am clueless!

Cody

 

PCMread won't work? Hmm. Have you tried PCMcomm? They are both made by the same person/company... they have the blue icons like Freescan... And those are so basic, I use those really quick to test my connection sometimes... usually PCMcomm.

You say it works sometimes, and then off and on. So its either the cable losing its connection somehow, or your laptop slowing down or freaking out. Not sure about how your laptop performs, but mine is a 300 MHz P2 with 128 MB of memory I think... and it works fine. So I'd check your cable, the connections inside of the connectors if you can unscrew them... I did that. Make sure the cable isn't jiggling on either end of course. And maybe have someone with a similar scantool/cable check your ALDL port, maybe it's faulty. Or go to Autozone and have them pull your codes for free, if they can.

Or the battery... what about your BIOS, I set my battery limit times to 15 minutes I think, they were set to 3 and 4 minutes... I'm talking about the processor, display and keyboard activity ones, there were a few more I think. But you'll run into problems if those are set to a low time limit... its alot like a screen saver, except it puts your laptop in standby or whatever. Those may need changed.

 

I have been useing the windows flash utillity for awhile now- It works great! If you email tc@tunercat he will send you the link. I Run windows 2000 and don't have any problems, I heard that a lot of people that use windows XP have problems(with everything) That's my 2 cents. Good Luck>