I'm new to tunercat, and I tried to do my first pcm read last night. When I tried to do it, I got an error message that said "pcm not responding". When I tried to start the car afterwards, it would just crank but not start.

The cable I bought has a 25 pin connector on it, so I plugged it in to the 25 pin port on the laptop. After all this happened, I realized that the port is for a printer.

I'm trying to get another cable to plug in to the proper port on my laptop, but what do I have to do to get my car running again?

 

The printer port is not the same a the serial port, so I don't know how you could have physically done that. If you had plugged into the printer port, you would never had gotten any communication at all, so you must have plugged it into the proper port.

What version of Tunercat do you have? There were some recent threads with issues using version 2.16.

I don't know why a read would disable your PCM.

 

Both the cable and the port had female connectors, so I bought a cable with both ends male to get it plugged in.

I'm not sure which version of Tunercat I have, but I will look when I get home. I also couldn't get datamaster to work.

 

I guess I should mention that I bought the laptop from a friend loaded with the software. He used it to tune several cars in the past, including mine a couple years ago, but with a different cable.

 

Disconnect the battery for a few minutes and see if that will reset your pcm. You're not supposed to be able to damage your pcm by reading it but if you were connected to the wrong port who knows.

 

I figured out the problem.

When I pushed the car out of the shop the other night, I disconnected the battery. I just now hooked the battery back up and tried to start it. Still wouldn't start. I checked all my fuses, which were all good. So, on a whim I disconnected my Accel ignition and plugged in the stock ignition, and the car fired right up.

So, I assume that I somehow fried my ignition box. Do you think this is related to the problem with the cable, or just a coincidence that this happened at the same time?

BTW, the cable I got is completely useless. The guy I bought it from claimed it was an AKM cable, but it clearly has AutoXray on the aldl connector, and instead of having all 12 pins like the AKM, it only has 5 pins, like in the pic below.

 

What year is your car? If the plug was incorrect for your car then it wouldnt go in at all. I know plenty of cables that say auto x-ray on them and work fine.

 

I'm not saying that it doesn't work just because its an autoxray cable. I'm saying that I think it didn't work because it only has 5 pins where the AKM cable has all 12 pins. Not to mention that I didn't get what I thought I was buying, but that's half my fault for not researching what I needed and half my fault for trusting the guy when he told me that's what I needed.

 

You don't need all 12 pins. Even the DLC does not use them all.

 

i think hes missing the rest of the cable to be honest. he saidone end has a 25 pin connector. that doesnt sound right. sounds like hes missing the rs232 adapter portion to the serial cable part.

 

Yeah you're right. Looking at the pics of the AKM cables, I do not have that.

Is that something I can buy from a computer store, or is it made specifically for aldl cables?

 

I was just taking a guess by comparing pictures. So you think this cable I have will work if I can get the thing mentioned in the previous post?

 

yes, you can buy rs232 adapters online. you can even buy them from akm I think. goto thier website and check the list of hardware components they sell. if you dont see what you need email them and let them know you only have the aldl portion of the cable. You need the rs232 adapter and i think a db15 to db9? cable. You can make that portion if you know how to solder and read a schematic.

 

Post pics of the other end of the cable and the ports on your computer and/or post the model of your computer.


Let's figure out what you actually have before you damage the ECM or the laptop.


To be honest, somebody who just buys adapters to plug things together randomly without understanding probably shouldn't be tuning the ECM.


It also sounds like you have an illegal copy of TunerCat there.

 

I got everything figured out, thanks, but why would you assume that my software is illegal?