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This is totally unexpected. With all this brow-knitting, you just might develop a uni-brow, or worse, your hair might fall out. Hope you're pacing yourself and getting some rest in between.
Are these new features going to be spliced into PCM hammer?
I'm having some issues with a few PCMs that I have been testing your serial rewrite app, old read only app, and the PCM hammer program. A few of them now show the serial number as a bunch of diamonds and any bin file read out fails the checksums. They're all 09354896 PCMs. Some have been flashed to the 2002 12212156 OS and back to older OSes etc for various tests and uses. Do you think writing a good BIN file with your current write app would fully correct the corruption in these PCMs or did some part of it that doesn't get overwritten get trashed somehow? Can I get a copy of the new app to give it a try? I do have some good bins laying around I could try.
Also has anyone set up a repository of stock bin files anywhere yet?
I think the deal may be me flashing the 2002 os on and it leaving junk in places the older oses would have left untouched and blank. So PCM hammer etc calculates everything off those and thinks it's corrupt due to the spare data. Hptuners doesn't seem to care and it works fine in there, though the serial numbers are often jacked up. That all makes sense with the checksums being right when I go back to a 2002 os. Tis2000 and hptuners both don't seem to completely correct the problem there, probably only a full good bin flash will id say.
Going to test one in a car, I bet it doesn't car about the junk data and hptuners doesn't either, just lame the available free solutions now don't like my pcms due to the error checking.
Originally Posted by jamesr
I'm having some issues with a few PCMs that I have been testing your serial rewrite app, old read only app, and the PCM hammer program. A few of them now show the serial number as a bunch of diamonds and any bin file read out fails the checksums. They're all 09354896 PCMs. Some have been flashed to the 2002 12212156 OS and back to older OSes etc for various tests and uses. Do you think writing a good BIN file with your current write app would fully correct the corruption in these PCMs or did some part of it that doesn't get overwritten get trashed somehow? Can I get a copy of the new app to give it a try? I do have some good bins laying around I could try.
Also has anyone set up a repository of stock bin files anywhere yet?
I think the deal may be me flashing the 2002 os on and it leaving junk in places the older oses would have left untouched and blank. So PCM hammer etc calculates everything off those and thinks it's corrupt due to the spare data. Hptuners doesn't seem to care and it works fine in there, though the serial numbers are often jacked up. That all makes sense with the checksums being right when I go back to a 2002 os. Tis2000 and hptuners both don't seem to completely correct the problem there, probably only a full good bin flash will id say.
Going to test one in a car, I bet it doesn't car about the junk data and hptuners doesn't either, just lame the available free solutions now don't like my pcms due to the error checking.
The issue would be with the tool you flashed the OS onto the PCM with. I know it wasn't the PCM hammer since it doesn't offer OS flashing at this point(Only Calibration flashing) and my Android flash app leaves behind no such gibberish. As a matter of fact most people use my Vin/Serial app to "Fix" the 896 Pcm's after being updated to the 2002 OS since most commercial flash tools will corrupt the $4000-$8000 range of the flash chip when you update the PCM. The file offset is slightly different between most 896 pcm OS's and the 0411 ones.
If the Pcm Hammer is complaining about the checsums then either your running an EFI Live or HPT COS and those are unsupported for the most part. Its also possible the file does have bad checksums, some of the 896 pcm's were shipped with bad ones and just had the internal check in the pcm to see if they were valid disabled.
When the OS is flashed everything on the flash chip other then the 4-8K block is erased. In the 4-8K range are the Vin, Serial, Bcc, Seed/Key, VATS codes etc. There is nothing related to the actual OS checksums in this area that would be affecting the file being flashed since data in the area isn't actually written into the PCM. If it was you would copy the vin/serial number in the bin file your flashing. This can be done but not with the Pcm Hammer or any other PC based tool. My Android app is the only thing to my knowledge that can do this and it creates an exact clone of the PCM the file was read from. If you did that on a PCM that was licensed with a commercial tool like HPT you would loose the license since the pcm would not contain all the relevant data of the PCM the file was taken from.
It would also be a bit more appropriate to post PCM hammer related questions in the thread about the Pcm Hammer
The issue would be with the tool you flashed the OS onto the PCM with. I know it wasn't the PCM hammer since it doesn't offer OS flashing at this point(Only Calibration flashing) and my Android flash app leaves behind no such gibberish. As a matter of fact most people use my Vin/Serial app to "Fix" the 896 Pcm's after being updated to the 2002 OS since most commercial flash tools will corrupt the $4000-$8000 range of the flash chip when you update the PCM. The file offset is slightly different between most 896 pcm OS's and the 0411 ones.
If the Pcm Hammer is complaining about the checsums then either your running an EFI Live or HPT COS and those are unsupported for the most part. Its also possible the file does have bad checksums, some of the 896 pcm's were shipped with bad ones and just had the internal check in the pcm to see if they were valid disabled.
When the OS is flashed everything on the flash chip other then the 4-8K block is erased. In the 4-8K range are the Vin, Serial, Bcc, Seed/Key, VATS codes etc. There is nothing related to the actual OS checksums in this area that would be affecting the file being flashed since data in the area isn't actually written into the PCM. If it was you would copy the vin/serial number in the bin file your flashing. This can be done but not with the Pcm Hammer or any other PC based tool. My Android app is the only thing to my knowledge that can do this and it creates an exact clone of the PCM the file was read from. If you did that on a PCM that was licensed with a commercial tool like HPT you would loose the license since the pcm would not contain all the relevant data of the PCM the file was taken from.
It would also be a bit more appropriate to post PCM hammer related questions in the thread about the Pcm Hammer
That corruption sounds like what is happening. Upgraded these 896 pcms to 2002 os with tis2000 and had the serial numbers freak out and it seemed to also have a blank key at least. Files would still read out in hp tuners and other apps. I'm using PCM hammer as an example since I don't have the write version of your app. Your app was able to fix the serial number at least on those.
The problem came when I used tis2000 to downgrade them back to an older os for whatever reason. More corruption and had trouble getting your app to fix the serial again, though sometimes randomly I could get it to stick. I assume the PCM is perfectly usable like that, and hptuners doesn't seem to care. If I read out the pcm now though in a bin format at least the PCM hammer segment checks all fail past the os part and doesn't let me write so I'm stuck using hptuners to tune these now instead of tunerpro unless your app doesn't check that either.
I guess the real tie in to your app here (and why I'm not posting in the PCM hammer thread) is if it will completely fix the PCM back to a factory state if had a bin from before I flashed the 2002 os on, and it sounds like that is what you are saying. Ill be sure to at least read out the pcms as bins before I do any os changes, and once your write version is released I'll use it to do the 2002 os conversion instead of tis2000 or hptuners to avoid the corruption altogether.
I'll also add that hptuners does supposedly write those blocks, or at least they say doing a write entire should fix the serial number issue. I did that and read it out as a bin and it did not actually fix PCM hammer thinking the file was corrupt, so it seems hptuners possibly skips writing blank stuff over orphaned data from the 2002 os swap if that is indeed what I have, so it seems your write app and a clean original bin may be the only true fix (though it's probably only really a problem if I want to use tuner pro on these in the future without changing back to the 2002 os. Once I put it back to 2002 os it was all happy again)
I'll also add that hptuners does supposedly write those blocks, or at least they say doing a write entire should fix the serial number issue. I did that and read it out as a bin and it did not actually fix PCM hammer thinking the file was corrupt, so it seems hptuners possibly skips writing blank stuff over orphaned data from the 2002 os swap if that is indeed what I have, so it seems your write app and a clean original bin may be the only true fix (though it's probably only really a problem if I want to use tuner pro on these in the future without changing back to the 2002 os. Once I put it back to 2002 os it was all happy again)
If you have something Android 6.0 or newer thats NOT a $40-$50 dollar tablet and one of the Obdlink devices shoot me a PM for a copy of the Alpha version of the write app. When my app flashes it doesn't care what the checksums are....or even what your flashing.... as long as the first 4 bytes and last 2 bytes of the bin data being written are correct it'll write it. If you were to "Clone" using a bin file you could go back in with the Vin/Serial app and correct the values back to what they were originally.
And as you have found out, once you upgrade the OS when you downgrade to the older version is jacks things up a LOT worse then when you upgrade. Your actually lucky, I've seen a lot of people brick pcm's doing this...well bricked by the "Normal" use of the term, most of the time they can still be recovered even after SPS flails flashing them.
If you have something Android 6.0 or newer thats NOT a $40-$50 dollar tablet and one of the Obdlink devices shoot me a PM for a copy of the Alpha version of the write app. When my app flashes it doesn't care what the checksums are....or even what your flashing.... as long as the first 4 bytes and last 2 bytes of the bin data being written are correct it'll write it. If you were to "Clone" using a bin file you could go back in with the Vin/Serial app and correct the values back to what they were originally.
And as you have found out, once you upgrade the OS when you downgrade to the older version is jacks things up a LOT worse then when you upgrade. Your actually lucky, I've seen a lot of people brick pcm's doing this...well bricked by the "Normal" use of the term, most of the time they can still be recovered even after SPS flails flashing them.
Sent you a PM, i'll give it a try and report back how it works bringing them back to how they should be.
My friend did put it in his car and fire it up and his car seems to run fine, but it's not driving yet. It'll be interesting to compare the bin from it to a correct flash out of SPS and then to a 2002 os calibration that I used to flash it to see if what I was describing with the checksums was just because of gibberish in blank spaces left over by the 2002 os as I suspect. Should be easy enough to compare and find.
So is the write portion still in Alpha? I've been following along for some time now, I'm pretty excited with the progress you guy's have made. I'd love to cover it on my Youtube channels as there's quite a bit of interest outside of this forum in your app.
Just found this thread, Nice work Pete!!! First clusters, now the read/write App for my phone. You are the man. I don't have the cables, but I would be interested in the software to update the VIN in my truck. I have an OBS 2000 Silverado with an LS swap, but the computer has a 2002 Silverado 2500HD tune and VIN on it. It would be awesome to have my VIN match, but not give me any trouble connecting if I had a dyno tune later on.
So is the write portion still in Alpha? I've been following along for some time now, I'm pretty excited with the progress you guy's have made. I'd love to cover it on my Youtube channels as there's quite a bit of interest outside of this forum in your app.
The only copes of the read or write version of the app that I have shared are all Alpha versions. I've been working on a beta release version for a while now that combines everything I have created so far into a single app with a "Nice" looking UI. All the bugs and odd behavior that people have reported from the read app and bugs found in the write app are also being addressed for the beta release. It's very likely I will also be including the ability to read a lot of the 96-06 V6 pcm's as well as read only support for the LB7 Duramax. Both the V6 and Duramax write side are going to take a fair bit of development still for write kernels but I'm making sure I have all the frame work in place so that I can add write support for these with out needing to make any changes in the app other then dropping in the kernels and removing the lockout to access them.
As far as your YouTube channel goes feel free to demo or discuss the Android app. There are also a number of videos of the app in action on my Youtube channel your welcome to pull clips from if you'd like.
Now just to keep things clear, Ls Droid has been developed and written by myself and I have been working with Kur4o(JonneyGears) from Gearhead-EFI.com for development of the flash kernels for the last 8 months or so.
The PcmHammer is an entirely separate project and while I have contributed to it; that is being written by NSFW, Antus from Pcmhacking.net with the J2534 tool support being done by Envious Customs. NSFW is pretty active on this forum and would be the one to talk to if your wanting to discuss or do any kind of coverage of the PcmHammer for your Youtube channel. I'm sure he would have no objections to you discussing it but I can't speak for him.
I'm also a bit curious as to what other places you've noticed or found interest in whats being done here? Outside of this forum the Sloppy Mechanics public group has been about the only other place I've found a significant amount of interest in any of this. I do have threads on a couple of other forums but they get a fraction of the interest I've found here on ls1tech.
Just found this thread, Nice work Pete!!! First clusters, now the read/write App for my phone. You are the man. I don't have the cables, but I would be interested in the software to update the VIN in my truck. I have an OBS 2000 Silverado with an LS swap, but the computer has a 2002 Silverado 2500HD tune and VIN on it. It would be awesome to have my VIN match, but not give me any trouble connecting if I had a dyno tune later on.
My Android apps all use the same devices so it doesn't matter if your just wanting to change a vin number or want to clone a PCM.
As far as changing the vin in the PCM and later having it dyno tuned that will really depend on what software the tuner is using. Some programs like HPT need a correct vin programmed into the PCM and other programs like EFI Live or Tuner Cats don't care what the Vin number is. But the vins simple enough to change so its not like you couldn't change it back to what ever it is right now when you go and have it tuned.
So one of the things that's bothered me for some time was the amount of time it took to flash an OS or Clone a P59, it was long enough that doing it in a vehicle was questionable and would test just how good the vehicles battery really was.....not something you want to be doing while flashing a pcm.
After a great deal of brainstorming with Kru4o@Gearhead-EFI.com on how to improve the flash times for these pcm's he had an idea....if there was a way to add compression into the flash kernel so that large blocks of data could be written with a single command it would put the P01 and P59 on nearly equal playing fields since the actual size of the P59 OS is only slightly larger then a P01 and the remaining parts of the P59 flash chip filled with empty padding. If only we could write the padded area's of the flash chip with out needing to send the 400kb's of empty data we could really speed up the P59 flash times.......
Just an update, I was able to clone PCMs no problem with the Alpha version you sent me. No corrupted stuff.
And as for the other thing with PCM hammer saying i had corrupt files, apparently that was just a bug in the software so no issues there to begin with most likely. Either way, much nicer not to deal with possible corruption to begin with!
The Beta version is really starting to take shape and look like a real app. The app now can pull data from a web server so I'm able to provide details on bug fixes and changes from with in the app itself. I also was able to add in the ability to update the app from within the app using the Google installer service to automate the entire process. No more searching for a current version or trying to find where you downloaded the apk to.
Ls Droid is now in open beta....
Currently only read is enabled for the P01/P59, 98-05 V6(exact coverage unknown) and the 2001 -2004 LB7.
Once I'm confident there aren't any major hickups I will enable ALL forms or write on the P01 and P59. V6 and Lb7 flash are still in the development stage.
This is the last version of the app you'll ever need. All future updates can be done from within the app. As the app is updated things may change that you don't like So I've decided to make avaible ALL previous versions of Ls Droid that are stable from this point on and can also be downloaded from with in the app.
For those that are feeling daring I've also included the P01/P59 Alpha Write version(Can be downloaded from with in the Beta app) This version was in testing for the last 4 months and only had a couple of users run into issues BUT I would strongly advise against using it on your daily driver as it does have some bugs.... and does not play nice with some vehicles. I am no longer offering support for this version of the app so if you run into trouble with it your going to be on your own.
Ls Droid is currently ONLY compatible with the Obdlink Lx, Mx and Mx+ Bluetooth devices. However a new tool will be supported in the near future that is more then 4x's faster then any of the Obdlink devices and also costs a bit less less
