i bought a lead to adapt the emerald pc loom to turn it into a usb fitting, the adapter software is uploaded but the computer doesnt pick up the ecu with the ignition on. my mate said he had the same problem so he bought a really basic old school laptop with origonal screw in type plug which works it fine? he said he's known people to have problems with these leads and just wondering if anyone else has? cheers

 

dont use the USB adapters, most dont work properly unfortunately

get yourself a PCMCIA (PC CARD) one and you should have zero problems.

 

just looked on ebay and the first few results are all <£10 and look like cheap shit from hong kong. dunno if theyre any good or not

 

cheers mate, just had a look, what does it actually plug into though as it looks like a drive im unfimiluar with i have the 9 pin emerald lead that needs to go to either usb or the video port which the video port ive been told is no good?

 

its a 9 pin serial port, the connector is called an rs232. refered to as a COM port also. its what we used to use before the days of USB.

unfortunately most laptops nowadays dont come with these ports as they're old tech

If you email emerald they might be able to reccomend you a suitable convertor that works faultlessly with their ECU. dont be afraid to spend 50quid ish on something GOOD. as what you really dont want is a bad quality one corrupting the map and you then being stranded i had exactly this when mapping and me and chip were stuck for ages trying to re-flash the map to get the car to run again.

 

I bought a Keyspan usb adapter than works fine with the Megasquirt ecu.

 

I got a USB adaptor from Maplin for my Autronic and it works spot on!

 

I bought a cheapy USB to RS232 DB9 off Ebay for £5 delivered from kong-hong, didn't expect much of it, but it works perfectly and allows my laptop to talk to Megasquirt effortlessly

 

it says in the emerald manual which type of USB converter to use mate.
and actually says that most cheap high street ones will give the Exact problems you are having... emerald sell one that will work,

 

this is where i got mine, but it doesnt want to reconognise the ecu but do away with the converter and use me mates old skool laptops and it works fine , chips just going to stick to the old laptop whilst setting it up, uses the good old 9 pin

 

Usb-serial converters are very hit and miss, sometimes you get lucky sometimes not, depends on your individual application and chipset that the adaptor is based on, either individually or in combination. The ones we have found most reliable at work are based on "Prolific" usb-serial chipset, but you have no way of knowing what's inside them generally.
PCMCIA RS232 converters are much more reliable, I haven't come across a situation yet that they haven't worked.
I recently bought this one - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PCMCIA-To-RS23...713.m153.l1262 and using it with Emerald with no problems. I'm not particularly reccomending this one, it was one I randomly chose, but just confirming it works with our K3 emerald.

 

Also, dont forget to configure the virtual COM ports so you can use them. If they arent assigned to a COM port your ecu can see, it will never work.

 

im not the best on computers, does this mean just loading the software up for it? if so ive done this, cheers

 

did you work out why the TPS was out?

 

No...you need to go into Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager

The go to the COM ports section, and you should spot your USB adaptor in there somewhere.

Go into its properties and somewhere there will be an option to assign it to certain COM ports ( COM1-whatever )

Most applications can find 1-5, so choose one of these. Hopefully there is one vacant. If you choose one that isnt vacant, it might interfere with the operation of other devices.