Scott

I believe it was you who said a dealer could re-flash a chipped ECU to return it to stock condition. If it is really that easy why are GIAC and APR doing all that soldering?

I agree that they can easily tell a non stock ECU from a stock one. Thats why I bought a second ECU as well. but to be able to just flash it seems unusual.

Scott

180Q Garrett

D-TTrain

I believe soldering has nothing to do with this whole thing. They use a chip on the ECU that is called an EEPROM (electronically erasable programmable read only memory) (now you know why they shorten it!) this allows them to not only burn the program into the chip but also allows them to upgrade that same chip with newer data in the future if they come up with a free upgrade. TO make the chip non-erasable would also make it non-upgradeable and would drive the cost of the chip up because they would have to send a master EEPROM in to a chip manufacturer and have one made. This is akin to your CD-ROM writers that you can get for your computer. Using a rewritable CD gives you the ability to overwrite the data on that CD at a later date. Unfortunately this also give somebody the ability to erase what's on the CD also. If you want the CD to be non erasable you would have to ideally have it manufactured (very expensive because most CD manufacturers would require you to order thousands of them at a minimum) or write it to a CD-R disk (no equivalent that I know of in the chip world). All chips that you can write to can also be erased using the same program that does the writing. And since these guys are always going to be tweaking their chip to perform better and better it serves them and you to not make the chip rewritable. At least this is my understanding of how things work. MNE, care to expand upon this? )

Jenner

1st in order to re-program the chip without soldering you need the VAG tool. I am sure it is $$$ and they don't sell it to just anyone. 2nd, if everyone programmed it this way, how you would you keep other tuners from seeing your code? You can't.

I am going to go out on a limb here and repeat what a Engineer friend of mine told me when he looked at Garretts setup. He said that the small chip underneath the socket(not the main chip that controls the engine) is a decoder and translates his code to be readable by the engine(obviously encrypting the main chip would do you no good without a decoder because hows the engine supposed to read it). Yes this again means that the VAG tool can read the decoded code if the engine can, but like I said not everyone has this tool to read engine code, but they do have EEPROM readers and writers and if it was that easy to steal a tuners code everyone would be trying to hop on the 1.8T chip market with a slightly modified APR chip or whatever flavor you want.

Garrett told me that his chips are not detectable via VAG tool but they can(and its happened to one of his cumtomers) be reflashed much like a motherboards BIOS via someone in the service department.

I think it would be best if Garrett himself or Steve or Brent from APR comment on the needs/reasons for soldering. The only other one I can think of is that they would need your car or a version of your car on hand to program your mailed in ECU, or else everyone would have to drive to a local tuner and that would shrink their market.

And D-TTrain, soldering has lots to do with the tuning process(I think all tuners do it) and this quote of yours("And since these guys are always going to be tweaking their chip to perform better and better it serves them and you to not make the chip rewritable.") is totally wrong. They can easily flash your chip if you mail it to them to upgrade to the latest revision of the chip, a special chip coded for you to elminate pinging or because you don't have access to 93 octane. Or even if you put in a K04 turbo. I know for a fact Garrett will let you mail in your EEPROM for software upgrade if he releases a new version and that if you install a K04 turbo he will charge you a $40 upgrade fee for his advanced K04 code.

My guess Scott is that the VAG tool is expensive and soldering allows them to tune cars that aren't local to them. Last time I talked to Garrett he told me the future ECU's will be in ceramic cases and not be openable like present ECU's which means tuning in the future will have to be via the VAG tool or something like it.

My 2 cents...Garrett or APR or anyone please correct me in any areas that I'm wrong.

-Jenner
'00 180QX TT Garrett H&R Sport Springs

Brett- APR

The EEPROM's are placed on an encryption board so that we tuners can protect our software. I cannot comment on other encryption boards but ours are designed so that they cannot be reflashed via a VAG tool or any external tool. Software updates are performed by removing the EEPROM from the encryption board and reprogramming the EEPROM directly.


Brett
APR

John S

EPROM's came before EEPROM's and are cheaper