New to tuning

bjzq8

bjzq8

New member
I thought I'd just give a quick "hi!" to everyone in this forum. I'm a new Ty owner ('92 #1752) and am very interested in prom-ification as everyone is doing here.

A little background on myself...I am 26 years old, and currently a technical coordinator for a school district in western Illinois. My background is automotive anything; I have several GM certifications, although I never went for any ASE's. I have done lots of diagnosis and repair on GM OBD-I systems, and OBD-II for that matter.

That being said, when it comes to Typhoons, I am a neophyte. I prostrate myself at the foot of the throne of those that did the 3-bar conversion. I am fascinated by the whole concept of modifying the PROMs. I have done scan tool diagnosis with everything from a Tech I to Tech II to Mac and Snapon scantools. Actually being able to modify those parameters just blows my mind.

To get down to the meat of my question, where is a good place to start for equipment? I understand that at a mininum, I'll need an EPROM eraser, an EPROM progammer, and the like. Where's a good place (online?) to get these?

My truck is almost completely stock, with the exception of an ATR Pitbull chip. I would just love to make a few changes and just play with it (not to the point of playing with pieces flying through my block, of course.)
But my short-term goal is to put an Ultimate on it, since it's obviously the best chip out there. Thanks for any help anyone can give me...I listen a lot better than I talk!

Bill Jenkins
1992 Ty #1752
2000 S-10 ZQ8
1984 Fiero V-8
 
S

Sy769

Donating Member
ftp://ftp.diy-efi.org/pub/gmecm/manuals/1227749/Turbo_P4_Doc.pdf


A lifetime of reading and deciphering in that document. (At least for me)

That's a start. Print it out read it, read it again, Lot's of stuff to understand before you get a burner. Matter of fact you don't need a burner for a while because you might be tempted to do changes before you have a good understanding. :)


http://www.sytyauthority.net/ Look below the Ty and you'll see the link to download promgrammer. Make sure and pay Bill so he continues to update and improve this program.


Here is a stock SyTy bin to load into promgrammer so you can kind of see what some of this means.
http://www.sharemation.com/sy769/1580bbzb.bin
 
B

BillC

New member
The hardware you'll need for chip editing are:
  • - A Prom burner (I use and recommend the EMP-11 from Needhams, http://www.needhams.com -- no affiliation with them, just a happy customer).
    - EPROM chips - the stock eprom is a 27C128 (they are kinda hard to find, you can substitute a 27C256 if you burn the bin to the top half). The Ultimate Chip uses a 27C2001.
    - An EPROM eraser, if you want to re-use your chips (I use a "Datarase II" that I got from http://www.jdr.com -- works reasonably well and includes a timer).
    - A computer, but you probably already have this :)

The software you'll need:
  • - A bin editing program -- this parses through the raw binary and displays the tables and parameters in human-readable form. I prefer Promgrammer, but then, I'm a little biased. :D Also available are TunerCat and WinBin (there may be others, but those are the ones I'm aware of).
    - A hex editor, if you are going to work on multi-program chips (like the Ultimate). This will allow you to cut apart a multi-bin file into the individual bins for editing (the editing programs only work on one bin at a time), or to reassemble the bins into one file for burning to a chip. Some burners, like the EMP-11, already include this capability, so you may not need the editor, depends on what hardware you get.

But, the most important thing you'll need is RESEARCH!!!! Read the GM P4 document. Read BG's chipping pages. Use the search function on this BB and read everything you can find. It takes a while to really start understanding how the chip works. Just take your time, and it will come.
 
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