[b3lha]

Originally Posted by Nomake Wan

So I'm watching this series about a guy asking about problems on a message board and I say to myself, why not this stuff yourself, silly?

Here's the "weird cable" that the guy plugged in. This confirms that the device used was a "Select Monitor II," PN22771AA030.



And here's the one that plugged into it. I told you it looked like a parallel port!!

You may be right, but it's a big assumption that anything with a 25pin D is parallel. Particularly on proprietrary devices like this. Remember that serial used 25pin D in the days when this car was built, before the 9pin D became common.

Originally Posted by Nomake Wan

Sadly I'm getting these from the dealer equivalent of Subaruparts.com, so they aren't exactly forthcoming with the technical details. I was lucky they had photos, let alone a color one. I have exhausted my Google skills without luck for finding any tech specs of the SSMII. All I can offer are these pictures, for now...

EDIT: Thinking alone garners many things. Like this.

So I'm looking at the picture of the "weird cable" that I'd never seen before, and going, "I think I've seen that before." It's the OBDII connector from the VWRX site. So then I remember that the site says that the OBDI and OBDII connectors have the same properties, just different pin locations. Makes sense that all they need is a simple cable to change forms. And then it further hits me. The cable is parallel. Vikash used parallel. And using parallel, Vikash didn't need a converter box at all... he just wired a parallel cable straight up to the Metra adapter and went from there. Is Parallel TTL? Or...something? Never mind, just d that and sure enough parallel is TTL. That answers that.

Absolutely right on all counts.

Originally Posted by Nomake Wan

So considering the Hex Comm software is incredibly basic and the ECU accepts our commands, it's unlikely that it's the software at fault for the ECU errors. And since the SSMII works fine, then it's unlikely it's the ECU causing the ECU errors (as weird as that sounds). Which leaves only the converter box. Something is wrong with the converter box.

Yes. There seems to be a problem with the converter box. But it's almost right because it works on some ECUs and all TCUs.

Originally Posted by Nomake Wan

Phil, do you have a parallel port on that laptop you're testing with? Any chance you could mock up a really temporary test parallel cable?

Making a cable is the easy part. The difficulty is writing software to send serial data over the parallel port. The timing is critical and that is why Vikash had to write it in assembly and run it in MSDOS. I could modify Vikash's software with the SVX locations, we could use his parallel port circuit and it would probably work. But I think the serial solution is much a better bet in the long run - provided we manage to solve this annoying problem. I think we are getting close in the last couple of pages of brainstorming.