[Taskmaster]

I thought there was a way to unbrick? Hass can probably help out, but AA and OE won't steer you wrong.

[hassmaschine]

Yeah i can probably recover it. It would be easier if you had a copy of the original file but it can be peiced back together pretty easily.

[rjahl]

I have a download from the ECU taken a few months back. Tried to attach but the zip file was too large for this forum

[e90ftw]

If you have a Bavarian Technic cable you can try using BB flash to do a force write.

[rjahl]

I have good news to report.

After exhausting myself trying to recover the DME, I gave myself a break and sent the DME on a little holiday to Active Autowerks. They thought it was possible to recover and tune the unit but ultimately failed and sent it back. While the unit was gone and I was more relaxed I managed to get my INPA and winfkp sorted a little better and it took less then an hour to recover the DME when it returned this afternoon.

I recovered the DME using expert mode in winfkp, not a real fun area of the program to mess with, very powerful but unforgiving. I'm sure the community could use a good write-up on the procedures.

I am sure there is a moral to this story but I'm probably not the best teacher.


I managed to recover the dme using a calm head a fresh INPA install and winfkp expert mode.

[vilord]

how did you figure out which binaries to load onto the dme, and what process did you go through?

i'm intending to flash my dme (msv80) with software from a different series, and i guess i need some ideas of how to figure out which code is correct for the car i'm copying (since i can't just hook up the computer and read the current software numbers)

[Three_thirty_I]

Been reading through this thread, some really interesting and cool stuff here! You are a brave and knowledgeable chap hass!!

[hassmaschine]

Originally Posted by rjahl

I have good news to report.

After exhausting myself trying to recover the DME, I gave myself a break and sent the DME on a little holiday to Active Autowerks. They thought it was possible to recover and tune the unit but ultimately failed and sent it back. While the unit was gone and I was more relaxed I managed to get my INPA and winfkp sorted a little better and it took less then an hour to recover the DME when it returned this afternoon.

I recovered the DME using expert mode in winfkp, not a real fun area of the program to mess with, very powerful but unforgiving. I'm sure the community could use a good write-up on the procedures.

I am sure there is a moral to this story but I'm probably not the best teacher.


I managed to recover the dme using a calm head a fresh INPA install and winfkp expert mode.

I'm glad you were able to bring it back! I still don't understand why AA couldn't do it, but whatever. it runs now.

As far as why it failed, I'm 99.9% sure it was because the checksum wasn't corrected. I want to try and flash your file to one of my spare DMEs (with the checksum corrected) and see if it'll boot. You might be a bit gun shy now, but since you know how to recover it you could give it another shot. I'm assuming you flashed the stock file back, which has the wrong DISA thresholds for the 3 stage manifold.

if it works, then it should definitely be possible to modify files and flash using WinKFP. Which is a little bit dangerous as you found out, but many people have access to it.

[hassmaschine]

Originally Posted by vilord

how did you figure out which binaries to load onto the dme, and what process did you go through?

i'm intending to flash my dme (msv80) with software from a different series, and i guess i need some ideas of how to figure out which code is correct for the car i'm copying (since i can't just hook up the computer and read the current software numbers)

why can't you read the current software #? It's a string near the beginning of the file. basically you would copy the data section from another car but the software version must match. you'd leave the file header as-is. The other way is possibly using Expert mode since it'll let you flash anything.

but you also must correct the checksum, which on MSV80 is totally unknown at this point (I know what kind of checksum MSV70 is and where it's located, I just don't know what range it applies to).

Either way, this can be pretty dangerous. Also, I don't have any way to recover MSV80 from a brick state, so be careful. It's not impossible, of course, but few people will be able to do it and your standard answer will be to take it to the dealer for a new DME (or reprogramming if you're lucky).

IMO, something like the OFT would be a much safer way to modify values. If you mess something up, it has a recovery mode. Of course there is no MSV80 definition file..

[vilord]

essentially what i want to do is to load the stock program and data files for a MSV80 130i MT, which uses the same N52 engine as my car, and 3-stage intake, onto my MSV80 328xi.
since i'll be loading a standard pair of program and data unmodified, i'm more confident that it won't brick.
do i have misguided confidence here?

EDIT: I would ideally like to load the program and data file pair using ISTA/P, though I'm not sure if it will let me when it doesn't see the 130i code as an upgrade path from my current software...

EDIT 2: And... I don't know yet how to determine which PGM/DATA file pair is correct for the 130i... unless i can find some forum member in the UK who owns one and will pull it up for me... i don't know what files in the datum tell me that X data is for Y car...

[rjahl]

I found the Hardware and software numbers by finding the "programmed" dme numbers at the Real OEM web site. Drop the first digit in the part number. Look this up in the MSV70. HIS file within the MSV70 folder and follow the updates (old, new "ZB-ALT ZB-NEU" ) until you reach the oldest file. Then open the MSV70.dat file and the most current OPA. and ODA files will be listed next to the newest ZB number. Fairly easy. I did this for several versions of the Z4 and came up with a list of data files .ODA that used the exact same program file .OPA.

All of the files mentioned above are simple text files.

I actually copied these ODA files into excel and could easily see where most of the Data within these files are the same.

That's the easy part.

[vilord]

@rjahl: Thank you for such a detailed description! Just what I need

[rjahl]

I don't know anything about Insta/P but if it's written anything like Winfkp and Inpa, I will repeat Hassmaschine's warnings. There are no guarantees that anything you do will be repairable, make plans for that possibility. Aside from having little or no documentation this software is essentially a patchwork of data files and scripts, hundreds of them and many in German. I have downloaded at least four different packages and each of them are deficient in on way or another. Even if you get a base package installed correctly, you still need to have the right Daten packages correctly added including running a routine that updates a index file called .DA2 file. Without that file being correctly indexed you can have issues like I had last week. I was lucky and recovered the DME but I was completely unsuccessful in installing the higher output files.

I would still like to use the OEM higher output data files but I need to find another approach.

[vilord]

ISTA/P is what the BMW dealerships currently use for coding and upgrading. It utilizes a nice pretty GUI for all of the operations, gives lots of warnings, and 90% of the time won't let you fuck up (because when a tech at the dealership fucks up it costs them a lot of money)
My understanding is that it also only works with the high speed fiber optic / icom interconnect, which i dumped a bunch of money on a couple years ago and have only plugged in once...

[hassmaschine]

I don't really even know if it's worth loading an entire file from another car.

There aren't really that many settings that matter that you need to change - the VVL maps, intake/exhaust vanos, and DISA thresholds are about it. the ignition maps as far as I've seen are all identical from the 325i to the 328i, EU and US cars.

A much safer way would be to modify the stock data section for your car with the correct values, rather than an entirely different 0DA file that might have other changes you don't need or want. There are hundreds of differences between the files, but it's only a small handful of them that actually matter.

[vilord]

i see advantages and disadvantages to both approaches... the advantage to just changing what you need to change is that you know nothing else will be wrong.
the advantage of using a stock file from another car is that a) there might be changes you don't realize that you need, and b) the stock files definitely don't need mucking about with checksums and so on...
my thinking is to start with an attempt at using stock files, and if all goes well, stop there. if not, then i'll start running hex comparisons between the various MSV80 dumps and try to figure out what needs changing where, where the checksums are, etc, etc.

[rjahl]

My motivation for using Winfkp and a file from a different car was based on two facts.

1. I did not have another way to insert any programming into the DMW.
2 . Even if I could, I have no way to understand the data files. I can read Hex and edit but manually finding and identifying maps is not possible for me. I can see them in the data but actually locating the axis, offsets and values is beyond my current skill set.

[hassmaschine]

Originally Posted by vilord

i see advantages and disadvantages to both approaches... the advantage to just changing what you need to change is that you know nothing else will be wrong.
the advantage of using a stock file from another car is that a) there might be changes you don't realize that you need, and b) the stock files definitely don't need mucking about with checksums and so on...
my thinking is to start with an attempt at using stock files, and if all goes well, stop there. if not, then i'll start running hex comparisons between the various MSV80 dumps and try to figure out what needs changing where, where the checksums are, etc, etc.

the checksum is right after the software version header. I'm not really sure it doesn't need changing, unless you're forcing WinKFP to flash a file from a different version, but I don't think that will end well.

[rjahl]

As far as why it failed, I'm 99.9% sure it was because the checksum wasn't corrected. I want to try and flash your file to one of my spare DMEs (with the checksum corrected) and see if it'll boot. You might be a bit gun shy now, but since you know how to recover it you could give it another shot. I'm assuming you flashed the stock file back, which has the wrong DISA thresholds for the 3 stage manifold.

if it works, then it should definitely be possible to modify files and flash using WinKFP. Which is a little bit dangerous as you found out, but many people have access to it.[/QUOTE]


Hass,
Have you tried flashing the bin into your spare DME? I've been able to look at the file and I think I can see the error.

Can you confirm if the checksum is at 400A4-400A7

I'm guessing but it looks like this covers blocks40240-4FFFF and blocks 50000-5EAFF

Edit: second address has been corrected in red;

[hassmaschine]

I will confirm but yes it's in that area.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, last week was a 60 hour work week, this week doesn't look better.

edit: yes, 400A4-400A7 is the checksum location. as far as the range, I don't know if that was a typo but I've tried many selection sets and it doesn't appear to be that simple.

the only way I can think of is to change bytes at specific addresses, let my tool correct the checksum and then figure out what range it's looking for.

[rjahl]

Originally Posted by hassmaschine

I'm just curious what the 0da looks like in comparison to the full dump. I think I can convert it but I was wondering if you had one already done.

I finally cleaned these up. These are only a few ODA file conversions for the E85 but it's a good way to compare the differences between variants. All of these use the same S7577968.OPA, the ODA files look like a 100% transfer into the DME. The OPA files are a bit more complicated.

[_Ryan_]

Originally Posted by hassmaschine

I've mostly been working on a disassembly. Still trying to figure out the right memory layout. I've been stuck figuring out where the references to the parameters are, because i think i have the layout wrong.

I did start working on a 130i xdf. I'm not really comfortable posting it yet because it's still incomplete and there may be errors. The plan is to have msv70/80 xdfs for the common program versions.

Great. Out of curiosity, have you come across the XDF for the OFT?