Ignition timing erratic

[Fladiver64]

Looking great, I didn't know you had a servo IAC valve, which was one of the reasons I went with the megasquirt 2 with some options, which I think was still only about $500. I can see spending the extra money if the wiring harness is compatible with the new Holley. I just could not see paying the extra money because i was not going to use many of the race features the Holley offers, and I had to build a wire harness either way.

[chevynut]

Fladiver, I would go with something else if I knew what to get. I know the Holley HP EFI is overkill for me. I don't need 4 inputs and 4 outputs. I don't need boost control. I don't need NOS control. But I am confident that the HP EFI will be a drop-in replacement for the C950.

I wish I knew more about using that XP emulator and I'd give it a try. I have two working laptop PCs, one with W7 and one with W10. I'm just not sure what a stripped-down system buys me that I don't have with the C950. The XP emulator might solve the PC problem.

[56Safari]

Do they have a downloadable version of the software that I could try to install? If I can get the holley software installed on my virtual XP OS without any issues, we should be able to set you up with a working machine... There's a couple other simple variables like usb drivers and mapping the virtual OS to the physical USB ports on the host machine, but it's all stuff thats easily configurable...

Because virtual drives are isolated, the host operating system pretty much irrelevant... In theory I could build you a virtual drive with windows XP and working holley software on my MAC that you could open up and run with your W7 or W10 machines (all you would have to do is install virtual box and download the virtual OS that I built).

[chevynut]

The C950 software is available on the Holley website:

https://www.holley.com/support/resou...Fuel_Injection

It's about halfway down the page, "Commander 950 Software"

[56Safari]

Cool, I’ll try downloading/installing it later this evening and let you know.

[chevynut]

I took the CD I got with WXP Professional and tried to load it onto my W7 PC. It asked me to create a partition on the disc which I did. Then it proceeded to load for quite a while until it came up with an error that said "Line 0 of hivecls.inf is corrupted. Setup cannot continue. To quit setup press f3". So that's a dead end too. I asked the guy to send me another CD that's VERIFIED or refund my money. It was cheap on eBay but maybe a new one will work.

[56Safari]

I got the Holley software up and running on the windows XP virtual drive tonight... (I'm on a show right now until Saturday, so my time is limited for playing with fun stuff). I will try to upload my copy of XP with the C950 software installed on Google Drive by tomorrow night... Maybe you can download it and we can try to get it running on your W7 laptop with virtuabox. Then we can look at the USB to RS232 converter (needs to be spec'd to the speed of USB port on the HOST laptop, USB 2.0 is ideal, they're about $8-12 on Amazon). After that it's just mapping the USB ports on the host machine to the virtual machine

[chevynut]

56Safari, I re-tried the XP installation on my old HP Pavilion computer and it worked this time. No errors and it loaded and booted. However, it didn't ask me for a Microsoft XP Professional product code which I thought was weird. Does that mean it's going to quit on me in the future? The Compaq N610C computer I couldn't get to work and had the battery/charger problems with was originally XP Professional, so that's why I ordered it. The one I loaded it on to dual boot is the one I was using before I got a new HP W10 Pavilion last December. Since I'm far from an IT guy I'm pretty happy and amazed that I got this all set up by myself.

So it looks like I now have a working XP system, but it doesn't have a serial port. I'll try it out with the USB to serial adapter to see how it works on my ECU. I just need to figure out how the dual-boot works now .

I still may be interested in putting the Virtualbox on my W10 computer.

I'm pretty sure this is the USB to RS232 adapter I got from Best Buy: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insigni...?skuId=5883029

Thanks for all the help.

[Fladiver64]

If you are still have issues with the USB to serial cable, try this one https://www.efianalytics.com/registe...tCode=FTDI_USB. It worked for me when two others did not. The biggest issue is this is shielded and most of the "standard" ones are not. I use serial converters on several different projects and so far they have each found a different chip set that is the most stable so a little trial and error may be in order.

[chevynut]

Well today I got the driver for the USB to RS232 adapter loaded after about 2 hours of work. I took the PC out to the shop and connected it to my engine. After setting the comm port correctly I fired the engine and it looks like everything works like it's supposed to. I haven't gotten any "runtime errors" and I can read the ECU data with no problems.

The only thing is that I can't figure out how to get back to my W7 OS. I turn the PC off and it just boots to WXP as if it was the only OS on the machine. But I did create a separate 20GB partition for WXP when it loaded and the other partition with W7 should not have been disturbed. I would like to boot W7 on it if I can...any ideas?

Even if it doesn't boot W7 anymore at least I have a good PC for engine tuning. If it craps out I can try running the XP emulator Virtualbox if I need to. I still believe this ECU will do everything I'll ever want it to do.