I am going to post this question on an EFI forum, but there are a bunch of pretty bright guys here who might be able to help out. I am trying to calibrate the ECM on the ACcel Gen VII, but cannot get the Calmap software to find my laptop. The Calmap software requires a seriel port, and all of the ports on my Toshiba laptop are USB ports. So I bought a seriel port to USB adapter from Radio Shack, and installed it with the software that came with it, and the operating system tells me it is installed and working. However, it would not communicate fully with the MegaSquirt either, so maybe the software isn't fully doing it's job. Or, maybe I did not chose correctly from the choices available on the software disk when I installed it. With the MS some tables it would edit, and others it would not. (My old Dell, which died, worked fine with MS).

When I try to establish comminication between the ECM and the laptop, it says simply that it cannot open the com1 port. I am stuck here. Does anyone here know enough about computers to help me out? One detail that I suspect is important; when I go into the laptop's device manager program, I can set the usb adapter for com 1 but it tells me something else has been assigned to it. I uspect this is the source of confusion to Calmap. How do I find out what this other device is? I have no other devices hooked up at the time, although I know this laptop is set up for wireless internet. I tell the computer to asign com1 to the adapter anyway, and perhpas it now has two addresses, or labels assigned to it. I think this is a minor problem for a computer guy, but that is not me. I am just barely computer literate even though I used to write software. Help! and Thanks! Sam

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sounds like internal laptop bug. You may have your wireless internet card or adapter hooked up internally and assigned to COM1. You can manually override this assignation by entering the network connections administrator (control panel... don't recall exactly how that's called in english... I have ALL my computers running under windows in spanish,...) and reassign the device using com 1 to com5 or other.

BTW, I always kept a good running laptop (an old, old compaq presario 1600 something) for using remapping software. I was about to throw it out when I found out that most modern laptops wouldn't communicate as well as old ones with programmable ecu's....

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

I went out and reassigned the adapter to com2, and then chose com2 as the port for the Calmap. It would allow me to download a default calibration, but not to edit it with specifics yet. So part of the communication is working. It will start, and runs at about 11:1 A/F ratio. I don;t know how in the h---l it does start considering I have not specified any of the particulars of this set up. It does not know the engine size, bore and stroke, number of cylinders, batch fire or sequential, etc, etc. ,etc,etc,etc,It kind of blows my mind that it works at all. Anyway, I have it runing, but haven;t done any tuning on it yet, and will not until I can solve this problem. The default setting is probably a Chevy 350 v-8 so this thing is running like a slant with a 750 double pumper on it.
Sam

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There are few USB/serial port adapters that work well enough to run tuning programs.

I use an ancient 486 Laptop to run ALdl View to datalog....it has a built in serial port. It is still silly difficult to get the thing to run.

There is a fortune to be made by getting laptops to run through USB cables for tuning.......

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

I agree with Sandy. You need a real serial port. A lot of tuning software is based on old DOS or 16 bit Windows stuff which uses old drivers. This means that newfangled USB won't cut it. I bought an old Pentium class laptop at a garage sale for $20 with a working floppy and CD ROM drive even. It also made me feel good for saving my old PCMCIA network card. The only thing the laptop doesn't have that it should is a battery, but I have an inverter I can use in the car. If the car power is flakey or nonexistant I also have a couple gel cells that can power the inverter.

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Joshua

I bought an old IBM Thinkpad P2/366 so I could setup my EFI when the time comes...$200 isn't bad and it works just fine for that purpose.


-D.Idiot

I have a modern usb only laptop that I run with the radioshack usb>serial adapter. I think it defaulted to com4 on initial install. Once I set the Megatune software to com4 it worked without a hitch. Several people have had good luck with the radioshack adapter. www.diyautotune.com sells a usb>serial adapter that works well too. If the driver and adapter work right on your computer, it should be transparent to older dos applications running in windows environment

You can also get pcmcia cards with native serial interfaces on them for cheap instead of getting a whole new laptop.

If you want to buy a whole other laptop, check out fujitsu stylistic on ebay, they are tablet computers (no keyboard, write directly on the screen with a stylus like a palm). Theres "virtual keyboard" software for them too so you don't have to use the handwriting recognition software. Easier to deal with, less bulky then a laptop.

What is a pcmcia card? If you got the Radio Shack one to work, maybe I can too. But on the other hand, if you have gotten thhe Radio Shack one to work, maybe no adapter will work with this Calmap software. Do you remember what choices you made at install? This is the point in computer use tht I always fall down. They ask me questions that I do not know the ramifications of. Here is something tht is in the configuration that I am unsure of, the adapter has a baud rate of 9600, and uses an 8 bit processor. Is that right for this? Why do you suppose the soft ware writers of the engine management software have not addressed this issue? It is no small thing. And, it is going to get worse. Almost all periferals now use USB ports, including printers.
Sam

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Try the diff baud rates, this is basicly the speed that it lets data transfer. There is probably a certain speed the MS wants & needs. It shouldnt hurt anything if it dont work or gets worse, you can just set it back.

Sam, for MS-I you should set everything (megatune, and adapter parameters) to baud rate 9600, 8 bit communicaiton, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control.

I'm not sure what your accel stuffs requires.....

PCMCIA - forget acronym off hand but... you know the expansion slots in your laptop? The cards themselves usually are about the size of a credit card. They do have addon cards that allow you to put a genuine db9 serial port into any laptop that didn't come with one originally.

There are 2 kinds of card slots in laptop and notebook computers. The older type is the PCMCIA and the newer Card Bus. Card Bus slots will accept PCMCIA cards but PCMCIA slots will not accept and run Card Bus cards. You need to be sure which kinf you have and get the appropriate card to be sure that it will work.

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David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.

OK, I discovered that IF I select the port before going on line to the ECM, which is not supposed to be needed, I can tune. I still cannot use their calibration Wizards, but I can do everything else. Look to my other post for issues that have come up now.

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