I have been off the forum for a long while. My daughter headed to college this past month, and I got her PC! A friend upgraded it to a solid state drive for me, and I finally got to test out this custom cable. It worked like a champ on the first try! Thanks everyone and sparkfun!
I'll lead with: I'm writing this based on a 16197427 ECM - TunerProRT - using both Win7 and Win10 - If you want the short version skip down to "What ended up working"
I recently had some trouble getting the "Uber-easy DIY USB ALDL Cable" to work and wanted to share a few things I learned in case anyone else has this problem.
When looking for a USB cable, I learned this later, that there are 3.3 Volt and 5 Volt versions of the FTDI based USB, voltage is regarding the TTL signal (transistor-transistor-logic). I found a lot of good info about USB and Serial Communication searching the SparkFun website, this is just one about TTL levels if you're interested - https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials...l-logic-levels
The first USB I had was a 3.3V version and it had the same troubles a few people have described. It would sometimes connect (Blue) and then throw a bunch of error codes (Red occasionally flashing blue), most often it just wouldn't connect or do anything (but TunerPro would say that it was found and functional). But it would sometimes connect, so I was thinking it was something with software. I tried different FTDI drivers, different COM settings, Win7, Win10, two different laptops, somebody mentioned connecting only after the car is running so tried that, tried every USB port on two different laptops, and lastly, every different combo of the above along with plugging USB in before or after starting TunerPro, truck running or not, and restarting laptop numerous times.
Anyways, If I'm understanding properly, in theory, a 3.3V version should work as it's high signal would be above the 2.7V level needed to register as high, but I could just never get it to work. I got a 5V cable and now I can connect with the truck running or not, before or after I start TunerPro, even opening the laptop after hibernation with TunerPro on from the day before (showing the Red Error because the day before I just shut the laptop and unplugged the cable, but I just click disconnect and then connect and Happy Day, solid Blue).
A note on Win10 and drivers – Win10 saves drivers - I first installed the newest FTDI Drivers from their website. When the newest drivers didn't work, I uninstalled them and installed the older ones. When I would restart the computer Win10 would automatically revert to the first set of drivers that I had just uninstalled. I tried FT Clean to erase the drivers but Win10 would still automatically revert. Finally, after Googling a few fixes to permanently erase the first set of drivers I installed which didn't work, the only way I could fix it was to do a fresh install of Win10, then install the older set of drivers, and it's been fine since. (Win7 I didn't have the problem of it reverting, but it also wouldn't work with the newer drivers, so I did have to erase those and install the older ones to get everything to work).
What ended up working:
USB - DSD TECH SH-U09F - It has a jumper to choose the voltage and comes with USB and Dupont cables, set on the 5V jumper it has worked perfectly.
Driver - FTDI 04/10/2012 Ver. 2.8.24.0 from Moates site - http://support.moates.net/troublesho...-installation/ - Worked with Win7 and Win10 - The newest FTDI drivers didn’t work for me on either Win7 or Win10
Note 1 - Open Device Manager - USB serial port - Properties - Advanced - Set Latency Timer to 1msec
Note 2 - Make sure the COM port # in Device manager matches the setting in TunerPro
Note 3 – I used v250 XDF and v250 ADX downloaded from the TunerPro website for the $0D 16197427 ECM
I posted a couple pics in my profile, I can't seem to insert a pic here
Glad to hear you got it working. Weird that you had to roll back the driver to make it work. I ship the latest drivers along with my cables and they are FT232RL based. FTDI has it's drivers deprogram fake chips so I doubt yours are not real. An FYI to anyone out there trying to do the same thing. If you are purchasing a board at less than $5.00 the chip is most likely fake.
I've been working on getting my van properly running before I can try tuning since getting the cable to work. And then the cable stopped working! One of the conductors solder joints broke from being moved around in my backpack. I soldered it back up, epoxied the cable, and figured it was good. Not quite!
When I startup tunerpro, and check the cable with the tools utility, it checks out good. It shows the selected port as COM4.
Then when I hit the connect to the vehicle icon, the program shows Connecting in the lower status window, but it never connects. At that point, if I go back into the utility to check the cable, it shows the selected port as {COM4}, and it fails the check. This is repeatable.
The other item I noticed, is when TunerPro starts to try to connect, the Rx and Tx LED's on the sparkfun FTDI board start to flash, one flashes red and the other flashes green.
The connections look good on the cables. I need to verify that I've resoldered the broken connection to the correct line next. Perhaps someone hear knows why the brackets are changing on the COM port? That might be a good clue...
Last edited by tony-baroni; 11-27-2019 at 07:26 PM. Reason: Added screenshots
Maybe a stupid question, is your device manager port set to COM-4 too?
After doing some reading here and elsewhere, I bought this:
Attachment 15422
.. and it worked!
I just connected the Tx and Rx wires together and stuck them in the M pin, and the ground wire into the A pin.
Then after a slight learning curve with ALDLdroid and TunerPro RT, and some tinkering with various definition files that were quasi-related to my car, I finally found the right combination that gave me quality data.
For my 1993 Oldsmobile 98 (L27) with the 16141470 ECM, the $F5.adx is the one to use. I made a couple edits to the file so that the SEND commands would show up.
I have the factory service manual so I'm going to go through and edit the .adx file some more so that the values/units jive with the manual - just the plaintext and obvious stuff, not the hexadecimal code about which I'm clueless. Then I'll post it here so the one or two others who still drive '93s can use it in the future.
What I'm looking for is the .xdf file that fits my car as well as the $F5.adx does. I have the 5B4.xdf, but some of the data is nonsensical.
Anyone know where I can find that?
See what I'm really wanting to do here is diagnose my transmission. Either the torque converter clutch solenoid, or the TCC PWM solenoid, aren't behaving correctly.
According to what I've gathered so far, the TCC is operating at full line pressure pretty much all the time. I want to be able to open and close that solenoid from my laptop/phone to test it.
That's what the factory service manual is telling me to do as the next step in diagnostics -- but with a Tech 1 tool. I want TunerPro RT to be my Tech tool.
Hey guyz!
I have FT232RL cable. It works perfect with 8192. RX and TX are spliced to 8192 baud pin. And ground. Thats it.
I need to connect it to 160 baud car. Tons of information about it. It differs and no working solution found.
What modifications I need to do to make it work?
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