My computer is not talking to my Electromotive

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Think Racing

Well-known member
I have the TEC3R and recently sent it off for its upgrade. It came back and I installed it back into the car and connected it to the harnesses.

I Downloaded the Win4 software onto my laptop and went down the garage to upload the bin file. Turned the power on - Electromotive's green light came on - plugged in the USB to my laptop and waited ... nothing.

When I went into the computer settings it is not recognizing the USB, saying no drivers are installed. The Electromotive software says no connection via the port, so there is not any communication going on between the car and laptop.

I admit that this is my first time ever working with this product - and an ECM in general (At the moment, it would seem SU carbs and a Mallory are a bit easier). What gives? At one point, I just figured the two would start talking to each other without any prompts.

Anyone have any helpful solutions??

Thanks.
 
Think Racing":21245pyo said:
Looks like step 1 is to find a driver for the serial to USB adapter ...
Click to expand...

I have seen a lot of problems with some of the serial to USB adapters. We use them a lot for my real job. The ones you can get from like Best Buy or Walmart have been the worst for problems. The TRENDnet TU-S9 is the better one that I have found.
 
RonInSD":17fvtq7g said:
Think Racing":17fvtq7g said:
Looks like step 1 is to find a driver for the serial to USB adapter ...
Click to expand...

I have seen a lot of problems with some of the serial to USB adapters. We use them a lot for my real job. The ones you can get from like Best Buy or Walmart have been the worst for problems. The TRENDnet TU-S9 is the better one that I have found.
Click to expand...

FYI, we use these things all the time at work too. IBM/Lenovo laptops with Win 7 seem to absolutely hate most of the USB/serial converters. We use almost exclusively Dell Latitudes with our field equipment, and the $39 Gigaware (Radio Shack) USB adapters work flawlessly with them on every piece of equipment we've tried and on every operating system we've used so far.

hope that helps someone else down the road. Try the Radio Shack adapters.. most stores keep them on the shelves, so they're quick and easy even for those folks that don't have access to a Fry's or Best Buy or something.
 
I bought the one you recommended from Radio Shack. I have a new Toshiba with Windows 7.

Worked great. Now the hard part - tuning.
 
I bought a USB -> Serial adapter at Best Buy, fearing the worst.

It works like a champ - no problems whatsoever - with both my Electromotive Tec S and my Innovate wideband controller.

I did learn that the adapter changes COM ports based on which physical USB port I plug it into - which was unexpected.

I also had to tell both of my serial devices which COM port (3 or 4 in my case) the adapter was plugged into.

Anyway, the $20 cheapo at Best Buy works great for me on my Dell Lattitude.
 
Fred, I've had good luck just talking to local tuner guys, they're young...computer savvy and tend to redily understand how all this stuff fits together.
 
blamkin86":2e2g7zkj said:
I did learn that the adapter changes COM ports based on which physical USB port I plug it into - which was unexpected.

I also had to tell both of my serial devices which COM port (3 or 4 in my case) the adapter was plugged into.
Click to expand...


Many of these adapters have assignable COM ports so that you can tell it to run on COM 5 every time and it will stay that way. That's saved our tails a few times when we have several pieces of equipment on a laptop we have to leave in the field. The client will decide to relocate the computer for us and plugs everything in differently. Then nothing works and they scream at us.
The easiest thing to do is to just plug the adapter into the same USB port every time and it *should* keep the same COM port.

the other side of that is that if you have a Dell Latitude, you shouldn't need a USB to serial adapter.. That's why our company buys them is they're one of the last ones on the market to still keep a real serial port on the computer.
 
A wee bit of Schadenfreud as we've had this problem as an ongoing issue with our MegaSquirt Systems. Confirms my strong belief that computers are devil spawn, designed to eliminate what little bit of sanity I still have.

Never having used the higher end systems, I sort of presumed they would be immune to this sort of issue. However, our "failure to communicate" rises to much more diabolical levels.
Plugging the same converter into the same port and it is a crapshoot whether the ecu decides to talk to the PC or not. On new installs it gets much worse. I've resorted to using a desktop with an actual Serial Port - this has worked well when we are in the shop loading software into a new ecu, but obviously doesn't help us at the track.

Since using a desktop with a serial port seems to work better, I've thought of buying an old laptop to use. What is the newest old laptop that actually have a serial port?
Henry
 
Team DNR":3gkw6k4p said:
Since using a desktop with a serial port seems to work better, I've thought of buying an old laptop to use. What is the newest old laptop that actually have a serial port?
Henry
Click to expand...

Thinkpad T-30 is known to have a real serial port, and is a pretty decent piece.
 
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