I've seen that a few people, enough to worry me, are frying their pcm while trying to upload a tune. I'm getting ready to start tuning and I am getting a spare pcm just in case but what can I do to ensure that I dont fry my pcm and have to have it reflashed.

follow the flashing instructions VERY carefully.

I have flashed my PCM over 100 times without a problem.

As long as you do it right you have nothing to worry about.

Make sure that the cars battery is fully charged, all accessories turned off, and make sure that your laptop is fully charged and plugged into the wall.

I have a bench programming cable setup, I have a 13.8v power supply connected to a UPS power supply that the PC is also connected to. That way if any power failure is experienced the PC and the PCM stays alive. Short of the PC locking up to me this is the safest way to program a PCM.

I've also seen that some people have better luck running tunercat in DOS rather than windows. A better success rate. Are there any trade offs to running it in DOS rather than windows?

Hey man! See you got Tunercat. Anyway, there are no trade offs by running it in dos unless you consider extra security a trade off Tunercat recommends that you run it from dos.

Unfortunately, I just fried mine a couple of weeks ago. I don't really know why but my laptop was giving me problems just before it happened. I think the bin file got corrupted somehow and it just went nuts when I tried to program the pcm.

Good luck with yours! Later, Mike.

I killed 3 pcm i did everthing i could the right way ....now i have a bench top harness...this is by fare the safest way....

good luck

i bet ive done 75 programms. and ive never lost a pcm. set it in the seat of the car and leave it alone, when its done and it says pcm programm complete let it sit there about ten seconds. before clicking ok. you can always run freescan on it right before you load a file and make sure the laptop and the pcm are comunicating. and then upload the file. that way you know the cables are pluged in. just trying to help.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 97Z-M6
[B]i bet ive done 75 programms. and ive never lost a pcm. set it in the seat of the car and leave it alone, when its done and it says pcm programm complete let it sit there about ten seconds.

I did it this way as well but lost to pcm ...because of lost sig to the pcm ???? just bad luck.....if you ask some of the big dog on what they use for programing they will sat bench top/desk top programer harnnes with one you want to call it....all you do is unplug your pcm and go from there it may take 2 min more put it is the safest way...

Thanks everyone. Hopefully my experiences tuning will be good ones

If you have windows XP or 98 then go ahead and try out the windows flash utility. Its been my experience that you will lose the PCM when it starts to erase the flash chips right before you reflash them... I killed 2 of them this way and I THINK it was b/c i tried to boot the bin file off of a floppy disk instead of the hard drive. So I guess try and pull files off the hard drive instead of a floppy if your worried. I never lost a PCM with the old DOS versions so IMO that is your best bet. Get a boot disk from madwolf or if you cant get ahold of him, I have one here somewhere. Good luck!

I need that link to the "build your bench top harness yourself".

If someone has it, please forward it to me.

Thank You.

D Moss

Same here. I've been inquiring on building myown benchtop harness.


Tails

heres a stupid question. whats dos?

Thank you!

D Moss