Old 486 Board for ECU??

[Gavin]

Hi, I would like your thoughts on the following.

In a previous post about a digital dash, the thought of using a laptop to
drive the gauges,_and_the engine itself.  This got me thinking.

Take an old machine that companies are chucking out.(I've got a few
486's,early p100's etc..)  Rip out the hard drive,(the bit that  REALLY
won't like the harsh environment of the automotive world) and all other
sundries like a sound card(if your lucky!!), cd-rom etc...

All you want is the board, and floppy drive.  Run everything of off the
parallel port(I think serial would be far to messy), the one trouble I can
find here is the speed of data transfer for the PP.
On ignition on, the mainboard is switched on, the file from the floppy is
put into memory(the file being the equivilent of the bin).  Now it is in
memory, the floppy shouldn't have to be accessed. So now we have a very
powerfull processing unit, with upgradeable memory!!

A thought has just struck me though.  If the Parallel Port isn't quick
enough, how about making an ISA, or even PCI card.  I've seen the prototype
cards in Maplin.  May order one....

The advantages of this system is that instead of having to have an EPROM
reader, writer, eraser, you can modify maps from a PC.  The floppy can also
be changed easily.  The system could also lear and write back to the floppy,
the sco pe is massive.  An inbuilt data logger.

I would like some feedback into this idea, feel free to pick it to bits.

    -Gavin


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