Perceived Megasquirt problems?

[JasonNA]

Has anyone ever encountered this?

There's a tuner local to me who I rang about tuning my MS, he deals mostly in rally cars and has a proper RR setup etc but he told me that he wouldn't touch a Megasquirt as he's had nothing but bad experiences with it before. He told me that they inexplicably lose their tune and settings just randomly change and he's constantly getting people coming back to him saying their cars won't run because the tune has changed.

I have to say that I have actually experienced this, sometimes I would have TunerStudio running and the car running well and I'd switch the car off. I would then switch it back on immediately and for some reason TunerStudio would bring up a difference report and random settings would be completely different to the settings that where fine a second ago. For absolutely no reason that I can see.

Am I alone in this?

[jsmcortina]

I raced on MS1/Extra for a number of years before upgrading to MS3. I've never had a "lost tune" moment. However, TunerStudio didn't really exist when I was using MS1, so I couldn't have seen a difference report.

MS1 does have far simpler communications that MS2,3 so perhaps if something interrupted the data flow it could cause a problem.

Long ago I did have a customer that once or twice had some weird tune corruption with an early TunerStudio version. This was on MS2.

James

[JoseMiguel]

Unfortunately, this is true with ms1. It is not as dramatic as your tuner says, and it is not like you would loose your tune randomly one morning. From my experience, it is related with the usb-serial converter you are using.

This has never, ever happened with ms2 or ms3

[JasonNA]

Unfortunately, this is true with ms1. It is not as dramatic as your tuner says, and it is not like you would loose your tune randomly one morning. From my experience, it is related with the usb-serial converter you are using.

This has never, ever happened with ms2 or ms3

Is there a remedy for this? A recommended converter?

[jsmcortina]

Consider upgrading to MS2.

James

[JoseMiguel]

Unfortunately, this is true with ms1. It is not as dramatic as your tuner says, and it is not like you would loose your tune randomly one morning. From my experience, it is related with the usb-serial converter you are using.

This has never, ever happened with ms2 or ms3

Is there a remedy for this? A recommended converter?

My old converter was a non brand cheap converter. Im currently using a Linksys branded converter based on the Prolific chip. Works flawlessly and has never corrupted a MS1 firmware

[Matt Cramer]

I have seen badly wired installations let too many voltage spikes into the processor and cause trouble with the tune settings or firmware.

[dontz125]

There was a fellow a year or two back who did lots of work with the MS1. IIRC, he swore by adding a 0.1uF cap from JS6 / Pin 6 to ground, said it stabilized a lot of problems he had been seeing.

[jsmcortina]

There was a fellow a year or two back who did lots of work with the MS1. IIRC, he swore by adding a 0.1uF cap from JS6 / Pin 6 to ground, said it stabilized a lot of problems he had been seeing.

Is that the Reset pin? I recall installing a cap there when I ran MS1 a decade ago.

James

[dontz125]

That's the one.