Hello chaps

My DB7 has a Zytec ECU, this is now 19 years old although is programable, I have a friend with a chipped ECU so was wondering what is involved in cloning his EPROM and dropping into my car, I assume you pull out the chip, download the information then push back into my car, using a lead on the comms port is not possible as you need a dongle to access it.

Looking on eBay you can get kits cheaply for this, not sure if they would work back to something this old, does anyone have any knowledge?

Cheers Mark

It depends if the chip has been encripted, if it is then it would be much harder to copy. If not then Happy days. Dump out the data to a bin and write it to a new chip job done.

On my old lancia the standard ecu chip was enceipted but the after market ones were not. Once one person in the owners club had an upgrade chip from a well known Italian tuner for a specific turbo upgrade, it was simply a case of copy and distribute.

You would need an EPROM programmer suitable for the device you wish to read/program and either new blank device or an EPROM eraser (essentially an ultraviolet lamp of the correct wavelength).

If it's 19 years old then I suspect it will be a 27xxx device, e.g. 27256, which most programmers will support.

The TL866 programmer, widely available from numerous eBay sellers, is a pretty decent low cost programmer that supports a wide range of devices.

Thanks chaps, I will pull it from the car and have a look inside.

New EPROMs are cheap on eBay so a bit of experimentation is called for.

Make sure you observe anti static precautions when removing the EPROM from the ECU and handling.

As already said its probably a 27C128 or 256.