Uber-easy DIY USB ALDL Cable

[FSJ Guy]

Would one of these work?

http://www.sparkfun.com/search/resul...&what=products

[RobertISaar]

while some of them look similar, it doesn't look like the pins that are needed are available?

if the RXD, TXD and ground pins are able to be connected to and it is a TTL to USB(or maybe UART to USB?) converter, then it should work.

note: SHOULD. i researched the one i bought a bit before i pulled the trigger.

[EagleMark]

OK that link was to much fun! Now all we need is a Uber Nerd to use one of these to flash a OBDII PCM?
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9555

Robert in your spare time could you take pictures and links and ? For a formal writup on how to do the Cable? It would be great for the forum and I would convert it to our HTML pages. Many guys want to get into this but like us funds are limited nowadays and this is such a useful and cheap way to spend some time and get involved.

This goes to anyone and everything who wants to contribute something here!

[RobertISaar]

LOL, i can take 2 pics and write a paragraph, and that's about all that's necessary to explain how to make this type of cable. it's just that easy.

that link though..... quite interesting. it would require converting from UART to USB(or UART to serial) to use it with a computer(could use the adapter i listed earlier from the looks of it), but since it uses ELM327 instruction sets, it can be used with tunerpro to do some basic logging at least...

however, if the "large memory buffer" turns out to be large enough, it COULD be used to flash the PCM as well.... with the right software anyways, but that's always been the hard part.

[EagleMark]

Darn software...

[RobertISaar]

i can't write windows/DOS software worth a damn, otherwise i'd volunteer.... i only seem to work well with 68HC11/similar stuff.

did some digging as well:

http://www.obdsol.com/downloads/stn1110_vs_elm327.pdf

ELM327 has 1.5KB of RAM... the STN piece has 8KB. it also has 4 times as much PROM space and has a processing speed 10X faster as well...

IIRC, the big issue with attempting to use the ELM327 to flash the PCM was due to the ELM unit not being able to handle enough bytes of data at a time for transferring to the PCM.... with this much of a RAM bump, it seems like this at least has a shot at working. need to find someone who knows their OBD2 flashing protocalls to be certain.

[gregs78cam]

Good read here......But you already know that Robert........

http://60degreev6.com/forum/showthre...similar-device