HELP! ECM Crash

[a78turbo]

I will post here instead of DP where last post was. I was doing a partial flash, and when the upload said complete, I let truck sit with key off for about 30 seconds. When I turned the key back on, the check engine light was flashing very fast. No crank, no start. Flashscan says cannot communicate with ECM. Removed battery cables for about 10 minutes and retried flash. No luck. Would it be possible to recover frim this tragedy? Would I have to do a full reflash? Is it possible to do a full reflash of ECM in these circumstances?

[GMPX]

Well, I don't know what could have gone wrong on a partial flash to put it in this state, very odd indeed.
When you try to reflash now what is the exact error you get?
Cannot communicate with ECM or cannot communicate with Flashscan or the ECM takes the flash but you are still in a no start situation?.
If you want to Email direct, send to ross at efilive dot com

Cheers,
Ross

[a78turbo]

Cannot communicate with ECM is what is said. Was able to get ECM in in state of repair once, but did not take flash and will not communicate at this time. Still listed on FlashScan tool, but not responding to read or write commands. Thanks for your help.

[GMPX]

Mm, O.K, can you please Email me (if you don't mind), the file that you last flashed in to the ECM. I'll flash it into an ECM here to make sure the file itself is O.K. Oh, also, does it communicate with the Scantool?
Email address is in my first post.

Cheers,
Ross

[a78turbo]

File sent. Hope you can find the problem for me. Thanks

[bobo]

Is it fixed?

[Max Power]

Did you try disconnecting the batteries for a few minutes then plugging back in and seeing if you can communicate. I was under the impression that there is no way to kill an ECM by doing the part reflash.

[a78turbo]

I have found a way to kill the ECM with partial flash. Also killed one of Ross's test ECM's with that configuration from what he said last night. Do not set speedo pulses to 0!:badidea: Appears to send them into neverland. Not recoverable with any programmer unless EEPROM is pulled and reconfigured.

[Wasted Income]

Holy crap!!!

[a78turbo]

The customer service from them has been great. Have it all covered. Hopefully this does not happen to anyone else.

[bussard]

ECMS seem to have a problem frying with EFI i have been reading, and from what i have heard they are not cheap

[a78turbo]

There is probably less than a dozon dead ones to the thousands of others that have been flashed. It is actually safe to use in the personal version, just the commercial and up that will cause problems if you are not careful.

[Kennedy Diesel]

Most are operator error. There's only one known bug and that one bit me as well as Mr. Tripp. Mine were easily recoverable.

ECM Full flash (under normal circumstrances) only needs to be done once to lay the groundwork for the program, be it DSP2 or standard OS. This is the only time that they are really at risk, and the risk is relatively low.

[GMPX]

ECMS seem to have a problem frying with EFI i have been reading, and from what i have heard they are not cheap

I can see why you make this assumption. You may be referencing a recent post by an EFILive user who killed two ECM's in one day.......it was mentioned in later posts that it was in fact a handheld programmer that did that, not EFILive.
Years ago (before EFILive could tune) I was fixing LS1 PCM's that were 'fried' by LS1Edit. On average I would fix 3 - 4 per week. So I know exactly the frustration had by all when this happens.
One of our goals when writing EFILive was to make it as bullet proof in the reprogramming area as possible. For all the 1,000's of computers that have been flashed by EFILive probably 0.1% have failed. The odds are very rare, but it does happen.
We have recovery proceedures in place that for most programming failures will get the ECM up and running again.

It's not as dangerous as it might appear.

Cheers,
Ross