Advice needed (again...)

Yesterday I thought i'd go the AlphaN route as I could not get speeddensity to work properly.
Anyway i spend the morning setting up a new MSQ (from scratch) without MS connected.

then moved the MSQ to the laptop and went to the garage, loaded the new settings all seemed fine up to this point, then i switched the MS of and on again, hearing the familiar sound of the fuel pump priming, restarted TuneStudio, and no connection!
No amount of fiddeling with settings on the laptop made it connect. suspecting a fault in the old laptop I hooked up my work laptop to see if that would work. but that made no difference.

tried sarting the engine, and it kicked into life at the first turn of the key :-) running rough because all fuel settings where new, but it ran, so MS is not buggered. (completely)

still no comms! called it a day!

where should I start looking??
cable is connected on both sides. and is able to power the serial -> Bluetooth thingy.
(Which I did use to laod the MSQ but not in testing the serial connection after it gave problems)

checked all the com settings, they are OK
Tried MegaTune but that made no difference either.

Any suggestions?? Please!!

Is it a REAL 9 pin serial port on your Laptop, or a USB-Serial convertor?

Has this setup worked before on this laptop (ie all same hardware)?

Some USB Serial convertors do not follow the TRUE RS232 convention.
As a radio ham we have had this problem for a while. IF you find a Serial convertor that works, then hand on to it for dear life!

I have found the cheap ones from E-Buyer (45196 - not available now ) at at £6-7 work well. (Both on my MS and on my Ham Devices for controlling my radios)

I think you need to give a few more details of exactly what setup you have and whether it all worked before with this hardware etc.

Hope this helps.....

Close TuneStudio, and fire up HyperTerminal. Create a connection using the COM port you use for the MS using the following settings:

Bites Per Second: 9600
Data bits: 8
Parity: None
Stop Bits: 1
Flow Control: None

Now short pins 2 and 3 at the MS end of the serial cable (if you looking into the end of the connector, pins are usually identified with small numbers). You can use anything metallic to short the two pins as long as you don't short to any other pins or to the metal connector shield.

Type something on the keyboard, it should show within Hyper Terminal if your PCs COM port is working correctly. Removing the shorting link from pins 2 and 3 will stop any characters being echoed to the screen.

If this works is points to a possible problem with the MS itself.

To clarify:
I have used the same setup since I build MS, 1,5 years ago, and in the car since last year, (unfortunately I did not have much time last year to get it running properly)

It's a V3 board with a MSll processor running MSII code 2.89

the serial connection is normally a serial cable with a Bluetooth to serial dongle attached. works great, wel it did anyway.
I can take off the dongle and conect directly to the laptop (it's got a serial connector). all I need to do is tell the software to use a different com port.

And because I was loading the MSQ wirelessly (bluetooth) there were no mechanical forces on the cable/MS during this time.

I drove an hour on Friday, logging everything to the laptop. so it DID work!

Pieter

[Edited on 22/6/09 by corpi]

[Edited on 22/6/09 by corpi]

Mega Jolts had problems with the MAX 232 Chip and this requried you to change the chip, There was a tech note on there website could be the same problem..

If you on the serial connector out of the laptop - Connect pins 2 & 3 with a small bit of wire and then Open Hyper Terminal

Connec to the comm port and Set Up Hyper termianal as (Type vt100)

Data bits: 8
Parity: None
Stop Bits: 1
Flow Control: None

Now anything you type on hyper terminal screen should be seen- This is a CURDE "Loopback" but checks the operation of the comp port on the Laptop.


"AVOID BLUETOOTH" for comms - it won;t work that well and will be a real pain!.


ALSO Check you cable you are linking to the equipment with if- using a Muilt meter see if



2 --------- 2

3 --------- 3

5 --------- 5


or

2 ----------- 3

3 ----------- 2

5 ----------- 5

the second one is a CROSSED cable check the documentation to see what cable yo NEED.

[Edited on 22/606/09 by mad4x4]

I'll check the com port tonight but I doubt that this is it. I did try with 2 different laptops, both have worked with MS before!

cable should be ok too as it's the same cable that worked before.

could something have gone wrong in uploading the MSQ which makes the processor not answer to serial input? is this possible?

Pieter

[Edited on 22/6/09 by corpi]

It would be possible for you to have changed the serial settings to a higher Baud speed(eg 115K) than the standard previously and now it has been reset to the standard 9600. Check you settings on the laptops.

Tonight I did the loopback tests according to the MS build Manual.
First, just on the serial cable, shorting pins 2 and 3: success!
Then with the processor removed, I shorted pins 12 and 13, and did the loopback test again: Succes

Put the processor back powered up and tried to connect with MegaTune, the communications test fails

The only thing I can think of is to see if the flashing tool works. After all it seems that that the r232 circuit works, and reflash the processor with the MS code.

Can't do it tonight as social duties call...

any better suggestions??

Pieter

Update: newly flashing the code solved the problem...