Nistune Forums

Gents - can i be bold here - stay clear of grid boards - this is my personal opinion of course, and obviously not the view of the board!! but i have had problems, and see a lot of others.

Pete provides good boards for sr20 cars, and matt provide shit hot boards for loads of cars, why complicate things with emulators and such, the moates are very good, and the guy who makes them a great and very clever guy, i have used his products loads, however its not ideal, the only ideal emulator is the one have used for the past 6 month or so - the multirom 16L - but its expensive and for the cost, matts solution is much better, i bought the multirom as a "one stop solution"

although calum has a nice product too for certain cars too.

If needed i have a good working relationship with both techtom and an ex worker of techtom - i can provide good simple and normally same data type boards for any nissan ecu - some others too!

Im not wanting to make any money from this, and normally its cheaper than grid as a bonus.

surely there is no reason to go to grid?

prushton wrote:...matt provide shit hot boards for loads of cars, why complicate things with emulators and such...

I paid my board in advance to Matt some months ago and even provided him with an ER34 ECU for testing, but since I´m running out of time I just had to get a solution here and found the GRID boards useful - better than waiting.
I fully understand that Matt needs some more time for testing and getting the boards ready, but time is something I don´t have since we´re now driving around with the Skyline for 2 or 3 months with modified intake, and in limp mode this is not very funny as a daily drive...
So what I´m looking for urgently is the address info on throttle enrichment tables, that boards aren´t ready yet and therefore I have some trouble with emulators etc. is just something that bothers me, but nothing thats as important as getting the car to run well!

BTW, could you get your hands on those old techtom boards for ECR33 ECUs?

Andy - you have been very patient with me.... I still have your order form sitting here for the cost price of the Type 4 proto board.

When we originally got our first four prototype boards back at the start of the year, we were expecting them to work as the Type 4 boards are the exact same design as the Type 3 boards with but with the extra logic for the S14A/S15/ER34. Which is why I accepted your offer for drive testing ER34 since it looked ready to go... bad move on my part

Unfortunately our other local ER34 tester never eventuated and then we had one installed into a customers S15 ... with only for it to drop out whilst driving. Thats where the problems started...

Then we found a possible cause with some ECUs overwriting the ROM area (Z32 16 bit) and thought that was the problem. Unfortunately it wasnt and back to where we started. I have pulled the design back to what I reverse engineered from the GRID board and it still didn't stay stable. Checked timing and stabliliity of all the lines and our board looks perfect.

So still haven't got the exact cause for the dropouts and it has been a nightmare to diagnose and we still dont have the solution. Cant tell you how many hours have been poured into trying to get this working... I know why it only happens on certain ECUs though so I am chasing it from that end now


As for the emulation problem... I'm upto that right now and looking into it. When I was first developing I had 2 x Romulator I and 1 x Ostrich where two of those units were loaned and now returned

I used Romulator for devleoping and testing SPLIT + ODD/EVEN for 16 bit and Ostrich verified working after minor code changes for 8 bit

Tonight I plugged my emulator in backwards and fried one of the buffer chips on the romulator.... ECU wont run and starts soaking 5 amps from my power supply (bad). Replaced buffer chip and all good again

Hopefully you never made the same error as I did as that will kill your emulator. Romulators are easy to fix, but the Ostrich might not be. Havent had it to pieces yet



Currently I only have a Romulator I and Ostrich, but I can use those combined to do SPLIT mode on S13 and ODD/EVEN for S14/S15/ER34

So I tested the S13 out tonight and that works fine in SPLIT

And then S14 ODD/EVEN and this doesn't work. I plugged EPROM chips in and tested and was fine. Then swaped in emulator / EPROM chip combination

Pocket Romulator fine... but Moates with same program isn't with EPROM in other socket

So some difference with offsets between Romulator I (32K emulator) and Moates (64K emulator). Looking into it further again tomorrow night and hopefully have a fix for you then. Perhaps the moates is putting the ROM different to where I am expecting it to go?


Ed - Looking at the code tonight, and the software either takes the parameters from NTLOOKUPID or each parameter specified separately... but it wont do both

So I'm going to have to change the code so it does.... so it can take your parameter to override the default 0x8000 address currently coded in. Do that tomorrow night also

Also with your Moates which isn't retaining data... they have a small battery inside them. It may be flat... when you disconnect the unit there is no power for the RAM chip and it loses contents

Sounds like time for another battery

I dont believe batteries inside emulators are a good thing to have installed permanently in the vehicle due to this issue (battery can die at anytime). Thats why our boards used EEPROM backed up SRAM. It stays in there for ever (well 100 years claimed my manufacturer is almost for ever)

Matt wrote: So some difference with offsets between Romulator I (32K emulator) and Moates (64K emulator). Looking into it further again tomorrow night and hopefully have a fix for you then. Perhaps the moates is putting the ROM different to where I am expecting it to go?

Must have something to do with this, but btw - isn´t Moates capable of up to 512K?
Would be helpful if you outsource emulator config into some kind of ini-file, so customer can specify the upload addresses by himself
When do you think will you have the AEM fix added/release next version?
I´ve just got two more days left until I start my holiday to Norway, which is about 1000miles one-way! Would be cool if I could use the trip to make some adjustments to the ECU, maybe I can find the address for the throttle enrichment...since we´re driving with the Skyline and I don´t plan to drive all the way in limp mode

Matt wrote:Also with your Moates which isn't retaining data... they have a small battery inside them. It may be flat... when you disconnect the unit there is no power for the RAM chip and it loses contents

Sounds like time for another battery

I replaced them since they just had 3.6volts altogether (should have had 4.5), but afterwards I had those "I-dont-know-what-you-just-uploaded-verify-fails"-issues
And shortly afterwards the whole thing didn´t even connect to my PC again...

yes depends on socket size. 28 pin can do upto 27C512 which is 64K. that is what mine is switched too

i'll try and release with fix tomorrow night....

Is it possible to use the GRID board with two identical emulators - so that I use two Ostrich in 64k configuration - with your software as emulator 1 and 2?
Or doesn´t allow the board it for ER34 ECU?

Sounds great matt!

Pete, only reason I used GRID was I am not aware of any other K11 rom board.

That should work fine. You can use SPLIT mode with two moates since both emulators support at least 64KB each

I only used SPLIT mode because that is what my GRID board is socketed to, and at the time I only had twin 32KB Romulator I units to develop on

So NIStune should be able to upload the whole ROM image into each emulator

Let me know how that goes. Anyway I'll keep looking at it tonight after work...

OK, just been in the car and did an upload with switched even/odd emulators (so wrong way) - ECU didn´t connect to consult (just wanted to make sure NIStune overwrites the already uploaded roms).
Then connected in the correct order and uploaded - Consult worked
Started the car and altered AFR at idle - worked
THANKS!

Good stuff! So that throttle enrichment table for the ER34 that I hunted down works okay then?

Yeah I just had to add a manual 32K offset for ODD/EVEN to the Moates since it is a 64K emulator. This should work for Eds K11 board already with no address file changes (Ie will place emulated image at 0x8000-0xffff)

Matt wrote:Good stuff! So that throttle enrichment table for the ER34 that I hunted down works okay then?

Well not sure about that, but when I drove around without emulators attached, and tried to maptrace throttle enrichment it was stuck at the leftmost cell...no good sign I guess?

That table hasn't been translated at all.

I would need to hunt down what the Y axis and X axis of the table mean. Perhaps some info from the Z32 might help.... Once I know that then I can tie an input to trace against X axis

Currently that isn't active so you have no indication what cell the engine is using. Might have to adjust and see the response from the engine just for now. I'll look into it tonight...

Acceleration Enrichment has an RPM scale. From looking into the disassembly it is in multiples of 400rpm upto 6400rpm, so look at your RPMs and see if that lines up about right for now.

However that is just trying to work out the code... RPM(LSB) * 2 = index from what I can work out on the Q45

I've added it into the next version, only once I get that Moates firmware updated with the h/w maptrace will I know for sure

The Q45 has the most comprehensive address file but that doesnt even have scaling and the Z32 doesnt have this table in the address file or code, so the scalers document I have doesnt help there either