Hijacking OEM hardware

[Webb]

alex nicu wrote:

> In my opinion , this takes a lot of time and the results can't
> be
> predicted .

snip

> And for hardware point of view , way don't you use EFI332
> project . The
> 332 uC it's many times faster then your 552 , and some parts
> are design
> for controling the engine .

I agree that the '332 project is a wonderful idea. There are,
however, none available. The last person on this list to ask
about it was told "you can't get there from here" He was also
told that it was not a working system. Only the parts had been
used successfully.

The '332 is well suited to the EFI app in one way - the timers
that can be set to reload without cpu intervention (eliminates an
interrupt handling routine). And - the thing is certainly high
performance. More than is needed for a straightforward EFI app.
Useful only on something using fuzzy logic or some other
strangeness.

As far as a '552 not being powerful enough, I disagree wildly!
You're right that there is no floating point divide command, and
only a rudimentary fixed point one (This is an upgrade on  the
'51 instruction set) but this small software penalty is
manageable. The 68HC11 has been used on many systems, and the
'552 was diesigen to beat it. Some may disagree about the level
of success, but i think the notion that the differance is small
is pretty solid.

The reason I chose the '552 was that I could get a single board
computer with 8 channels of 8 bit A/D, an LCD driver, a C
compiler, an Assembler, a keyboard interface, 128K of ROM, 4 K
RAM and plenty of digital I/O for $89.

I'd stand by the choice as the most cost effective, but the OEM
stuff is even cheaper, and has all the injector drivers and such
already done. If only there were a complete source of information
(memory and I/O maps, peripheral chip types and specs, timing
data - in short, what I got when I bought my '552 board)

Still seems to me that we could identify a likely victim, and
force it to divulge it's secrets. These secrets would then become
a sub-board here - analogous to the '332 area.

On the subject of the likely victim. Seems like Ford has been
tried, and it was the engineer who was "Found On Road Dead". GM
is a good candidate, but in the interest of not stepping on
Steve's toes, I think I'll pass here too. Currently, I'm looking
at Subaru, and Tom Cloud's stuff.

Anyway, Input for the project is solicited.