The V8 Owners Forum -

I am agree with you there are cheapest alternative and certainly better than rechip the genuine ecu but here the legislation is very very strict and in case of crash rechipping is less detectable than aftermarket ecu.

Dimitri,

Problem is how are you going to get a chip that suits your particular spec engine. If the cam is anywhere near race spec then I've been told that MAF (airflow meter) won't work, perhaps you could hide a Megasquirt inside a 14cux casing

Kevin.

why hide it, just declare it, your covered then.

CastleMGBV8 wrote:Dimitri,

Problem is how are you going to get a chip that suits your particular spec engine. If the cam is anywhere near race spec then I've been told that MAF (airflow meter) won't work, perhaps you could hide a Megasquirt inside a 14cux casing

Kevin.

Not extreme here, it is an 4.6 with Stage 1 heads, 71mm plenum, 45mm trumpets and RC87 cam.

thev8kid wrote:why hide it, just declare it, your covered then.

Here MOT and insurance are another story... Genuine, only genuine. It is very simple here if you want modify your car and go on the road with it... ok no problem... put it on trailer

Not sure I understand the issue with Air Meter, why would it be effected. Did you speak to Mark as I know he has mapped every sort of tuned Rover V8 there is and they all had air meter as far as I am aware.

Yes you can buy an after market ECU for £300 but it does not end there, just look at some of the ongoing issues some people have on here. Do you want something you can get in and drive or something you are tinkering with to get to run right.

Having driven my car that was mapped by Mark one thing I can vouch for its drive-ability in all gears right through the rev range. No hesitation, no bulking. What amazed me is just how you could leave it in top and it would pull without any issues from 1000 rpm.

If you do have to stick with standard ECU then give Mark a call, it will only cost you a phone call and his advice is free.

Having spent thousands on my car I am more than happy to spend a little more and get it setup by someone who knows what they are doing, after all its the part that hangs everthing together. One mistake here and it could work out to be very expensive.

Just my thoughts

CastleMGBV8 wrote: I believe the chips are coded themselves so as to make them uncopyable and they self destruct.

That's just a myth to try and discourage people from copying them. They are simply standard EPROMs, and the chip itself can't tell the difference between someone reading it to copy it, and the ECU reading it to operate.

The socket probably just scrambles the address/data pins, and if you could figure out the scrambling by examining the PCB on the socket, you could read the EPROM, descramble the data on a PC, blow it into a new EPROM and plug it straight in without the special socket (not that i'd advocate piracy!)

(I design chips for a living BTW!)

Jeff

Reg,

Did you get my personal message,

Kevin.

Jeff,

you can copy the eprom thats the simple part but not the scrambler. I believe the data in the eprom is matched to the scrambler therefore copying the eprom would be of no use at all.

Marks back ground is Aviation, am sure he has protected his investment well.

r2d2hp wrote:Jeff,

you can copy the eprom thats the simple part but not the scrambler. I believe the data in the eprom is matched to the scrambler therefore copying the eprom would be of no use at all.

Marks back ground is Aviation, am sure he has protected his investment well.

I think that's Jeffs point - the scrambler is simply a switching around of the data and address pins. Which can be undone if one has the circuit of the adapter socket.

Chris.

And I don't think that's the case, Mark would not have made it that simple. Whats more the chip needs to be mapped correctly to each car like any other ECU. Think he might notice any pirated chips/sockets being his all have special labels on them.

I found an picture of TVR ECU with the genuine socket

Here an picture of the socket

As I understood the eprom socket allows to ecu to read bigger capacity chip.
Early 14CUX use 8K chip and later with genuine socket use 12k chip.
Only the Land Rover ECU require the decode socket.

Not sure where your information is from but it makes no sense to me.

All Optimax and Tornado chips come with additional decoder socket that is sandwiched between the eprom and the motherboard.

I confess to being right confused too! (easily done though). And I speak from ignorance as I've never seen either ECU.

But from an engineering standpoint (I am an electronic design engineer), I would expect both ECU's to have a standard EPROM fitted with no 'scrambler' or special socket. After all, the EPROM has no value without the ECU, so what's the point in copying it!

I can however see that an aftermarket EPROM (which is still exactly the same (or equivalent) part) would need something to go with it to render a direct copy useless without this extra part. So if you stuck an aftermarket EPROM in the ECU, it wouldn't work (nor would it be damaged) because the contents are scrambled. By having an intermediate layer, the data and address pins can be unscrambled, so EPROM + special socket is the equivalent of the original EPROM. This way copying the aftermarket EPROM is pointless as it won't work without the special socket.

All based on assumptions I know.

Chris.

That first picture looks like the street I live on!

Ok I am an idiot. I found my mistake . I didn't understand correctly the Mark Adams recommandations about eprom socket.
I thought when ecu has an genuine eprom socket you don't need of the socket who is sold with Mark Adams chip simply because decoder socket looks like the genuine eprom socket in TVR ECU.
But in all case you need of the decoder socket to use Mark Adams chip because his chips are coded.
Sorry again for my subborness. Semantic and translation English/French are not yet perfect in mine mind .