10 ms·
I look forward to the cyber-punkish future (real soon now?) where there's an old beige computer case with a Pentium MMX sticker on it on someone's passenger sea
by bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I look forward to the cyber-punkish future (real soon now?) where there's an old beige computer case with a Pentium MMX sticker on it on someone's passenger seat with wires snaking into the engine bay. "Yeah the ECU died, so I had to hack together this replacement...".
- tyingq 5y agoThere are cars where the enthusiast scene burns their own ECU EEPROMS to compensate air:fuel calculations after installing larger injectors, better flowing intakes, etc. Edit: There's also some "universal ECUs" from companies like Haltech. They sell a single ECU plus some adapter cables to make that single ECU run on a broad variety of cars from the 90's. Possible since the 90's cars all have the same rough types/numbers of sensors. Switchable software does the rest. I imagine this doesn't work past some year of make as the cars got more complex.
- _0ffh 5y agoYeah, but I think those enthusiasts are mostly just fixing up calibration values, not changing the actual control software.
- tyingq 5y agoIt is more than just a few values, it's maps to plot a curve. But they do actual control software too, though that's less common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaSquirt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaSquirt
- _0ffh 5y agoWell I never wrote "just a few", but I did write "mostly". Also, disclosure: I'm intimately familiar with the ECU software of a major player in the industry, though primarily the part that governs the air system. It's surprisingly sophisticated and extremely configurable just by fiddling with those calibration values.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoCheck out rusEFI. That's exactly what some people are doing... Writing their own engine control software.
- mhh__ 5y agoMaybe we'll have CMOS printers by then... (I can dream!)