Help troubleshooting

[hecmac]

Afternoon,

Been playing around with Mircrosquirt v3.0 for a couple of years on a kit car project. I have the unit installed but never tuned. The car would start after a couple of turns and run at a fairly rough idle until it was warm. I stopped there as I am a novice to the tuning game and didnt want to damage the engine. I tried to fire her up the other day and upon doing so there was no sign of her firing. I could hear the fuel pump priming as it always does when the unit is powered. There is a spark at coil 1 (COP added to MX5 engine). I will check for fuel being injected or if the plugs wet. I had been tidying wiring around the engine bay and I am now concerned I have inadvertently damaged the unit. The issue of her starting thing is not my real concern, the main concern it that I am not not able to get her to connect to tunerstudio at all. There was never an issue before with connection which is a serial cable to USB serial adapter. I have spent some time trawling the site an tried a few of the solutions offered to others, ie

I removed the unit from the vehicle and tested it on the bench without any of the sensors etc to eliminate noise being he issue. (connected 12v to pin 1, GND to pin 23 , serial GND to 19, RX and TX to 13 and 14, I also swapped round the RX and TX). Tried to different FDI serial adapters.

I have tried the loop test on both the serial cablea and get the expected response in Terminal when I short the RX and TX (on my windows 10, 7 and xp machines).

I have tried port checker on all three machines and none find the unit.

Tuner Studio does not find the unit, either by doing the auto search or through the mini terminal. The "S" command does not get a response from the unit.

I tried the MS dowloader 2 and port checker, again without any response from the ecu.

My question is this, is there a basic test that can be done on the unit to confirm if it is functioning ? Could anybody offer their thoughts on my assumption that the main processor is still functioning (it grounds the fuel pump upon being powered up and is "processing" the CAS signal by virtue of the presence of a spark). There is 5v at Vref. Can I assume there is a chip on the unit responsible for the RS323 and if so is there basic function test that can be done with little more than a multimeter!.

Many thanks for your assistance with this.

Thanks,

Hec

[Bernard Fife]

hecmac,

Did you try the tips here: http://www.useasydocs.com/details/connect.htm ?

Lance.

[hecmac]

Tried that but thank you for taking the time to reply. I have had a trawl over the site and it seems that the problem has raised its head quite a few times. I have a niggle that I have somehow damaged the unit as it seems very strange that it has stopped working suddenly . I am hopeful that perhaps a refresh via BDM may wake it up?

Kind regards,

Hec

[hecmac]

In the interests of helping others who may be in a similar position. The cause of my problems seems to be a burnt Gnd trace on the back of the board.
Its been repaired and is connecting fine now

Hec

[kholman]

Always appreciated when folks follow up with what worked.