i have just plugged my laptop into the car and realised i know the square root of fuck-all, ::getcoat::
who's kidding who here :confused1:
for anyone that is planning to hook up their laptop, grab the R53 ROM and try make some changes, please be aware that you need to recalcualte the checksum for the ECU prior to writing back, or you could screw things up. best case your car won't start until you flash back your original ROM image, or worst case you brick your ECU. although i've not heard of anyone actually bricking their ECU.
this is a quote from
TunerPro Checksum Plugins - MTX Electronics
What are checksums? A checksum is a value that is calculated from a block of digital data with the scope of being used in the future to verify if this data has been modified in any way. So basically if you change any of the maps in your cars ECU the currently saved checksum/s will not be correct and your car in most cases will not start.
this along with hardware and software versions, as well as VIN numbers coded into the ECU ROM also means you can not just get a JCW or GP tune and flash it to your MCS.
so unless you have a system to calculate the checksum, or you have someone that can do it for you, even if you do figure out where the maps are and what the maps do and how to change them, you will be stuck. really, this is where the vendors have you. they know how to calc the checksum and you don't. or you know what, maybe they don't know how to do it either and they paid another company for the software to calculate the checksum data for them.
now don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to come across saying "don't do it", if you have the know how and the balls to do it, i highly recommend it. i've been looking at the mini ecu on and off in my spare time for about 6-8 months now and have seen good results.
finding the maps in amongst all the gibberish comes with experience. i've been tuning non-minis for about 12yrs now, and originally i started with pre-existing information on map locations. over time i learnt how to recognise the patterns of maps amongst hex and 2D map representation. the problem i have is that the ECUs i used to (and still do) tune are quite a bit simpler than the mini ecu.
i've not actually seen two mini ECUs that are the same. the map locations are different for each software revision, i've only seen about 4 MCS ROMS, 2 JCW and 1 GP ROM in the time i've been looking at everything, but because each was a different software version, not one was the same. at first this absolutely did my head in. some guy from spain gave me the map locations for stuff he had found on his ecu, and none of it matched on mine, then i looked at a JCW ROM, same thing. i was going to give up, didn't look at it for about a week, then it dawned on me, the ROMs must be different on purpose.
for someone new to it all, to further complicate things, some of the maps are 8bit, some of the maps are 16bit, so you basically have to scan through the ROM twice, although again there is software that will do this for you, but it's not overly accurate most of the time, you might find a few legit maps this way though.