NefMoto

So it seems Moates doesn't sell the road runner emulator gut-kit anymore. Is it only because the kit is temporary sold out or is it gone permanently? And if so, why?

If it is gone for good, has anybody some info about any good and affordable emulator as an replacement for the road runner?

Shoot them an e-mail and ask. I haven't heard back from them yet, curious as to what they say. I personally haven't gotten mine to work reliably yet. It works for the most part, but will shut the engine off after anywhere from 3-4 changes. It's a pain, but I can still get the job done. There are also different firmware versions that were sold, and I was told I have the buggy one.

I gave up on mine. Never got it working.

And in experimenting, I think I managed to burn it out, since I can no longer load it.

I remember our convo about it back in the day. Any interest in selling it?

OK, so the RR is kinda buggy and unstable. Pity.  I think I have read the same thing you guys said from people that used the RR for tuning their LS1 V8s. 

So does it exist any other affordable emulator that can work for our ECUs?

Sure but it is definitively AS IS

As in, "it is broken, don't blame me if you can't get it working"

make me an offer, including shipping, i'm in socal.

You'll have to source the headers, I don't have spares. I'll include the ribbon cables though.

PM or email me directly.

Not that I know of :(

If i had time I'd build/design my own..

Not that I know of, and I've been on the lookout. If you run across those threads on the ls forum again, could you pm me some links? Interested to see what issues they've had.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/301928841679

Yowza.

yeah, I'm not sure that falls under the "affordable" requirement. it does however solve the "emulator" part of the equation.

That plus you'll have a tough time getting it working with a hacked winols... you'll have to buy the real deal or forget it.

i own 3 ols licenses + bsl100 from them as well.

Thinking of using something like this

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/bemicrocva9/arrow-development-tools

but still need 3.3v->5v conversion.

I've had my working since I worked with Moates and Tunerpro to get it up and running and the swap board made. Yes it is a bit buggy but on the whole works ok,

Need to make sure the ECU has the checksum turned off really, and you can need to reflash the eeprom a few times, but on the whole its ok. Plus very handy!

There is a version of tunerpro which supported 16bit emulation and also worked well with live logging that PRJ setup..

Shame the stopped it though

Here's a link from the efilive forum

https://forum.efilive.com/showthread.php?9821-RoadRunner-guts-kit/page12

There they discuss about the absence of the RR gut-kit.
Moates seems to stopped selling the prefabbed ls1 ECU with already built-in RR because it was kinda unstable, and now because parts supply problems.
I think I also read about RR being a bit buggy and unstable when you real-time tuning, as littco described.

Nyet, that seems like a cool replacement for the RR if someone could get it all to work and so on.
Littco, so it was only a certain version of tunerpro that worked with 16bit emulation? I thought all of the recent versions had the support for it?

Could something like this work on ME7 ECUs?
 http://shop.fekzen.se/product.php?id_product=165

I'm curious so I'm gonna send a mail and ask them a few questions. They are Swedes like me.
It seems the flash chip is replaced for a chip with a USB-port so you can connect and communicate with the flash-chip directly and live.

But the Me7 ECU is more advanced than the Volvo 850 turbo ECU (m4.4)
And the BMW m50 ECUs (ms4.1) that the live-chip supports.

Read some more on the net. Seems Moates stopped RR because components on the board made the RR unstable.

Another thing I thought about, on Nissan ECUs they use 2 ostrich 2.0 emulators and some clever PCB board so they can connect and emulate 16-bit Nissan ECUs. Is that possible for me7 ECUs too?

sad to hear they stopped selling the roadrunner.

I own a roadrunner and used it on many cars so far (mostly m 3.8.3, but also me7).
yes, it has some problems; but it is definitively very handy.
 
and btw: some say ols300 can cause problems on me7 too

Absolutely nothing unstable on roadrunner, I don't know where this comes from.
I never had an ECU crash because of it.

OLS300 has issues when you don't disable checksums in the ECU. Same as the roadrunner. If you disable checksums there are no problems.

Using WinOLS, your bridge program, and emutility, it resets (engine dies) every 3-4 changes. Using TunerproRT no problems. Still trying to figure it out. You're (prj) using firmware ver 12.14, and I'm using ver 12.15, so there's that.

I gave up on mine.

One problem after another, HW issues.

Something went wrong with either their last batch, or their final revision of the board.

Maybe - I've had no issues whatsoever.
Sometimes out of the blue, every 100 changes or so it will stall.
Also, when rapidly cycling ignition, the ECU does not always boot the first time, but ALWAYS boots the 2nd time you cycle ignition.

Do you have all checksums turned off though? There is a patch that needs to be done, and the EEPROM modified to turn it all off.

It won't even load any more via their software.

The last time I had it loading, when I did a read via bootmode, a ton of the bits were stuck low.

Well that is definitely an issue.
Mine reads just fine in boot. Always has. You probably have a defective unit or something, or the cable is damaged.

The large ic in the middle of the board was bad. It would load/boot until the voltage regulator got hot. If you looked closely, you could see a small area in the middle that looked melted. The IC has been replaced, unit works fine now. Well with TPRT it does. :)  prj is the only person I know that has it working mostly issue free using WinOLS. prj, are you using emutility to upload to the emulator?

So that ic could be why moates stopped selling RR?

Tunerpro supports 2 x ostrich to emulate 16-bit ECUs. Can it be done on a ME7 ecu?

how do you workaround that the ecu does not boot?
I have a me 7.5 an my desk with connected roadrunner. I reads fine in bootmode but ecu does not boot. not one successfull boot in 50 attempts.

I have this boot issue randomly on a me 7.1.1 too. but the me 7.1.1 boots the 2nd time; the me7.5 never though boot mode reads are fine?

If it's on the bench, make sure you power pin 121. I have a bench harness that works great with every ecu, but it only uses the large plug. Could not get the RR to boot. Ever. Spent a lot of time trying different things. Powering 121 made it finally mostly work.

I've had RR in my daily drive for a couple of years now and I removed all checksum checks and also modified/decreased TNLSGM  from a couple of hours to 10seconds.
Even though I did not find all my notes I'm 99% sure that TNLSGM was my solution. Numerous hours spent to find the solution.
I've ran 10sec for a long time now. 2sec was to short, the ecu needs more time to finish the shutdown procedure, like write eeprom and such.

This gives a clean startup every time you enter your car and turn key. And close to 100% boot consistency.
Since I didn't find all notes I don't remember what implications could follow, you will never run in nachlauf again and it probably affects milage during startup.

prj, I think this could cure your boot problem too.

TNLSGM
Delay time for ECU shut-off

Great info, thanks! Now the only problem is the unavailability of the RR kit  :-[

thanks, pin 121 was the right hint! the ecu is booting now!

EmUtility + my tool.

The reason it is unavailable is that it did not sell a lot (they said it was by far their least popular project) and while they need to make more it just got pushed to the bottom of the priority list.
This also drove the board cost very high.
They will make it again, the question is when...


I will try, though it is irrelevant as I use the emulator only for tuning cars and then I put the original ECU back in.

great to hear that they will produce the roadrunner again.

btw: I got the roadrunner to work in a M 3.8.1. VR6 ecu emulating a plcc44 27C1024 eprom ( self-build custom adapter plcc44 / 28f800 with byte swapping ).

I have used it in a M3.8.3 instead of the 29F200 many times.

Could either of you post a pic of the adapter you used?

M3.8.3 works fine with moates byteswap adapter

I'l post later a pic of my selfmade PLCC44 adapter

You don't need a moates byteswap adapter. Just use my tool for monitoring and check the byteswap option.
Done.

Also when emulating a 29F200 don't forget to choose "4x" in the tool's stacker.

I sent them an email at the start of this year asking whether there was the possibility of running another batch... They said around 6-8 months time, but were quite vague on it.. I guess if a load of people contacted them and asked, we might get somewhere.

I'd be very tempted by one for use in an EDC15C... I just hope I can figure how to disable checksums in the software...

I have talked to them over the phone and they said they have had tons of interest lately and that it is due to exposure on nefmoto mostly and my tool linking it to OLS.
They have a lot of work right now, so no firm date when...

Sounds promising

Could PROMJet emulator from emutec.com work as a substitute for the RR?

Yes, looks like that would work. Looks like you'd need the 40/42 pin DIP adapter

That emulator does not look like it is for sale.
Lots of bold claims on their website, but no one I can find carries it and there is no price list whatsoever anywhere on their website.

roadrunner will be available in october again (according to moates website)

Nice! I have looked for other emulators but those I found was too pricey in the end or didn't support 16-bit bus and stuff like that.

Do you know if they have improved the RR or something like that?

Great news! I'll be looking to get one...

Shame it's just as the exchange rate has turned to shit - such is life!

I'll mostly be using this on EDC15C which also uses an AM29F400BT - I've seen some people say they've had problems with simply hitting the byte swap option? Is it worth getting a byteswap board? I'm just aware I'll be hacking up the ECU case as it won't fit a'la ME7...

If it comes to it, I'll just design my own byteswap board that will fit in an EDC15C case, but would rather just hit the byte swap button, far easier!

There is absolutely no difference between doing it in software and hardware.
If you have problems doing it one way, then you have problems doing it the other way.

I recommend you get good at IDA though, as you have to locate and disable the checksum routine that runs in real time.
Otherwise every time you make a change the engine dies.

Ideal, thanks for the confirmation on that.

Heh yes, currently it's a bit of a steep learning curve - determined to get there though, everything is possible with time and coffee.