Mike O.

The more I think about this, I should be able to program my own ECU. Somebody out there must have compiled a basic disassembler for the Bosch ECU by now.

A reader/writer (48 pin) with some decent software is less than 300 bucks!

Or, we could just go to racelogic (below) and see if this will work.

Any thoughts?
Mike O.<ul><li><a href="http://www.racelogic.co.uk/emulator.htm">racelogic</a></li></ul>

Carol from Canada

I came across this link some time ago.<ul><li><a href="http://www.evc.de/">http://www.evc.de/</a</li></ul>

Jimmy Pribble

If you want to pursue chip tuning as an intellectual excercise, you need not read any further. Go for it!

If you are pursuing it for economic reasons, you are probably way off the mark.

The emulator you linked to, looks to be around $2000USD, unless I am misreading something. However, let's go with your $300 figure. An APR chip for your car costs $399. Personally, if I spend more than two hours dorkin' with tuning my own chip, then the value of my personal time (getting more valuable by the day) has exceeded what I saved from buying from a tuner. If I foul-up and cause the car to grenade the turbo, or lean-out and burn a hole in one of my pistons, well...draw your own conclusion.

Again, if you try to do it yourself for intellectual reasons, I'm proud of that spirit! Good luck!

My $.02

xr4tic

All you need is to know where all the tables are located in the EEPROM.
Getting a chip, programming it, and swapping it out isn't that hard. Finding the tables is the hard part. I'm pretty sure Audi isn't going to let us know, and neither will the chip tuners.

Get me the tables, and I'll make you a chip.

You'd need one of the emulators to find all the tables and maps. Maybe if we get enough people together, we could afford the $2200 price tag.

xr4tic

I'm sure they could do it, but you'd have to drop your car off and be without it for a while. If you have your own tuner, everytime you make a change, you can do it yourself, and save a lot of time. Not to mention the fact that APR will probably charge you extra for a custom chip.

WYSIWYG

i never thought it will affect my life when i was doing some chip in college. i just mentioned the experience to an old timer who was interviewing me and i landed a job with IBM =)

Jimmy Pribble

I assumed the question was not being asked by a tuner or a potential tuner. Since most non-tuners purchase component configurations for which there is already a chip, then I guessed the only motivation was a) intellectual or b) financial. I addressed both of those scenarios.

If we are talking about the need for a chip that addresses a new or unique configuration, such as the new A4 Stage VII System (turbo from 280-ZX, UrS4 exhaust manifold with one of the header pipes stuffed up, and an intercooler made from an old window unit air conditioner core), then a custom chip MIGHT make sense over outsourcing the project to a tuner. That depends on many factors, which most can guess correctly.

Jimmy Pribble

I agree with your points completely. I just might draw a different conclusion.

Mike O.

All I'm looking to do is start with a stock chip, disassemble the tables and refer the values back to what I observe with the VAG-COM. Identifying the info within a table and figuring out what a given table does using this method doesn't seem too hard - or am I missing something?

Mike O.