Old 486 Board for ECU??

[Peter D. Hipson]

At 05:00 AM 4/29/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 21:44:43 +0100
>From: "Gavin" <gavston at sprockets.freeserve.co.uk>
>Subject: Old 486 Board for ECU??
>
>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...
>
First, this is totally possible. THe par port is more than fast enough, but
you would need more: some of your imputs are going to be analog, so some
A/D converters are needed. You can have two par ports on a standard PC, but
since they are not interrupt driven, if you write your own software you can
address as many ports as are installed on the PC--but each port must have a
configurable I/O address (some do, some do not).

Me I'd leave the HD and boot into DOS, however using only a floppy is
probably going to work fine as well. Just shock mount the heck out of it.
Then you can use standard compliers and development tools. As well, you
could then connect a keyboard and monitor and debug-a built in scanner <g>.

Several companies make cards that have substantial I/O capabilities. These
cards are a bit expensive, however. 

>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!!

Par ports are fast--much faster than the typical ECU of today. Memory...
Let's see, Windows 2000, 128 MB Ram, and a 10 Gig drive. Of course a flat
screen LCD display, and a minature keyboard would make a reasonable setup.

Me, I'd go for a laptop. Limited I/O without a custom card (they exist),
but most laptops have one or two serial ports, and a printer port. The
serial ports can be used for I/O on the control lines if desired.

>
>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
>

Thanks, 
        Peter Hipson (founder, NEHOG)
        1995 White NA Hummer Wagon
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