Curing GM EFI Vertigo?

[1project2many]

I was going to add this to a post in the 8D TBI thread but maybe it deserves its own thread.

My personal feeling regarding GM EFI hasn't changed in over 10 years. We EFI hotrodders put a bunch of work into playing with parts selection and software reconfiguring to get what we want. But we keep missing the big picture. Instead of mix and match software / ecm, the ideal situation would be to have a "master calibration" that we can put together as needed. Small changes that are ecm specific could be part of the calibration assembly so the calibration could be used in a variety of P4 family ecm's. Code written from scratch or assembled out of sections of GM code (the same way GM does much of it) would be fully documented, would require 1 tuner, 1 scanner, and could be made available to a bunch of different groups. Imagine hitting the syty forum, or the V660 forum, or thirdgen, or FSC, and being able to read and even use calibration changes and improvements that guys are coming up with in your vehicle, regardless of the different ecm's in play.

I have never understood the large amount of variation found in OBDI GM hardware and software but my gut tells me some of it's due to lack of communication between development groups. Often I've found software options that are never used, code that seems poorly implemented, and just plain dead sections of software indicating incomplete or improper development. Much of the GM code still has software included for the heads up displays used by GM engineering during initial development work for the particular calibration. And many of the cals have that software enabled, directing processor time away from the job of running the engine. The ecm can do so much more than we ask of it if only we bothered to ask.

I realize this forum has more hands on type guys than software and coding type guys and that's ok. But I at least wanted to throw this idea out there for others to think about. As you spend time trying to build definition files and find ALDL info, as you're bouncing from forum to forum trying to determine which ecm might be best for your application, and as you're trying to figure out which stock vehicle's wiring diagram to use with your EFI conversion, just think of the possibility of being able to pick up any one of a number of different ecm's and know it will work with the calibration, tuning, and scanning software you have without any dizzying list of requirements or "extra" knowledge.