[Diy_efi] Ford EEC reverse engineering was Spark Plug readings

Perry Harrington pedward at apsoft.com
Tue Jul 30 05:03:14 GMT 2002


It's funny.  It seems that there was a time when information was shared by
all and a lot of people had aligned to assemble information.  There is
the infamous eectch98 document and a few websites to archives, and a lot of
broken links.

The history seems to go something like this:

One guy got his wife an LX in '90 and started hacking it.  He used tools
available to him to peer into the EEC-IV and generate some useful modifications
to the tables.  This got around and he started burning chips for his buddies.
His name is Mike Wesley.  He started C&L Racing (dead link), which has
become Autologic (no presence).  Autologic released a demo version of their
program called the calibrator.  This is the PC frontend for making changes
to the EEC ROM.

Well, a number of enthusiasts were already working on reverse engineering the
EEC-IV.  These people got ahold of the public demo and started reverse engineering
the data in it.  This lead to a deeper understanding of the tables in the
EEC and their functions.  People also reverse engineered the chip modules
available at the time to get information.  Between the calibrator demo and
reverse engineering, code dumps, and priveleged information, the tech doc
was written.

What isn't shown on the surface, that I've been able to reconstruct, is this:

Mike was offered a job by Ford after his successes tuning engines for his buddies.
After working for Ford Mike had a great, if not profound, expert understanding
of how the EEC worked.  He used this information to further his company.  Ford
subsequently sued him.

Then came along a number of companies.  The EEC-Tuner was the first tuner product
for end users.  It keeps a copy of the EEC ROM contents in on-board RAM and
EEPROM.  It does all the address decoding and communication to the PC.  It
was born from the EEC tech document participation and reverse engineering by
the creator Eric Goel.  It has a few weaknesses such as noise susceptability,
no realtime programming, and serial communication is slow and troublesome.
It's a 1G product and has no conceptual support, just the mechanics of using
it.  No tuning documentation or support is provided.  The EEC-Tuner is most
definitely on Mike's crap list, because I asked my local tuner for a copy of
the spark table in my Autologic chip and was refused.  He said that it is
against his license agreement to provide any data that may be used in
conjunction with the EEC-Tuner.

The next user tunable product was the TwEECer from Mike Glover.  Mike is very much
on Mike Wesley's crap list, much for the same reason as Eric.  However the
TwEECer brings with it more features and a faster interface than the EEC-Tuner.
Mike has been working very hard on reverse engineering and buidling the TwEECer.
I don't know his detailed history, but he's a very vocal and involved guy.

Mike Wesley sees these two competing products as having built upon his information
and they wouldn't know crap from graham crackers if he hadn't showed them.
This coupled with the vapor Calibrator realtime programmer and you have a lot
of baggage.

There is a new product that is an adaptation of the Helion OBDII scanner which
will allow end user tuning.  I don't know a lot about it, but DiabloSport is
working on it.

DiabloSport, Hypertech, and Superchips pretty much round out the other
commercial offerings.

The only company I've seen coming forward to share their learned knowledge is
DiabloSport.  The owner Ivan Kotzig has written an introductory book on the
subject and is in the process of writing an advanced comprehensive book on
tuning.

It seems that the people in the know find the sharing of knowledge to be a
threat to their business.  The problem is that these people have a flawed
business model.  They believe that they can only make money by charging
$300 for a tune.  Sure, there are neophytes and people with more money than
time, but there are also people with knowledge, money, or time.  These people
are the ones subbed to this list.

Knowledge isn't a threat, it's competition that's the threat.  The first
company to actively contribute to the mass of knowledge on this subject will
likely reap rewards in good will.  It's been done in the past.  Resting on
the knowledge that you know more than the other guy will only work for a short
while.  Eventually someone will rock the paradigm and you will be left
struggling for a new business model.

So, to sum up what I've said, a lot of effort has been put into the understanding
of the EEC computer systems, but when the few people who truely grasp it start
to reach critical mass, they've gone private and stopped participating.  This
is akin to taking something like the MegaSquirt and co-opting it after a bunch
of people have contributed to the project.  Sure it's a harder analogy to follow,
but both represent time and effort expended by a whole.

This is the reason that software licenses like the Gnu Public License were created.
They ensure that all information that has been gained cannot be co-opted and
subverted.  Any further improvements must be given back to the public.  It
may seem silly to some, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

I think the current models are broken.  People need to understand what they are
doing and how to do it.  You can still make money selling hardware and *experience*.
Experience counts for a lot, but you can't get experience if there is nothing
to learn from.

My goal is to get the information out there.  I realize that you cannot simply ask
people for information, you have to contribute.  I will be contributing, I just
don't want to start out on a project and not contribute immediately.

--Perry

On Sat, Jul 29, 1995 at 10:10:35PM -0400, Bruce wrote:
> 
> It's a huge project, you might start enlisting help even thou you're not
> ready yet.   Doing it all single handed, is almost impossible.
> Bruce
> 

-- 
Perry Harrington			Data Acquisition & Instrumentation, Inc	
perry at dainst dot com					 http://www.dainst.com/

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty or safety. Nor, are they likely to end up with either.
                             -- Benjamin Franklin

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