Safe Speed Forums

Not a chance. Most electronics nowadays includes "security" related hardware and software. Not the sort of thing that will find its self in the public domain. Also there is the issue of intellectual property. Even the car manufacturers themselves are not allowed copies of software and circuits made by proprietary system manufacturers.

In addition there are more and more components that have a finite life. I am referring to Electro Luminescent back lighting for instrument displays, LCD displays and the new generation of OLEDs that are used in instrument clusters. These fade out in time and are usually custom made so will be impossible to reproduce.

Lets face it guys modern cars are designed to last about 10-15 years. Spares available for a further 10 (if you are lucky) after that its game over.....

Thats if the manufacturer is still in business. in a recent report 25% of US component manufacturers are facing bankrupsy so who knows what the future will hold.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I certainly like the idea of an escrow archive for "classic" software for the purpose Paul suggests. How can this be orchestrated? All those involved would need a pound of flesh (manufacturers need to be paid, the data storage house needs paying... Hmm...

Perhaps it's a government archive, with legislation requiring software source and object code to be lodged for all consumer durable products?

The costs wouldn't be great and the duty on manufacturers wouldn't be onerous.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Another problem is the type of boot code used and system of re-flashing. Security systems, by there very nature cannot be re-flashed. Otherwise crooks could override security features.

Even if the unit can be re-flashed it may be that the boot software is corrupted, then you are screwed anyway. There was one manufacturer (who shall remain nameless) that in the past used a boot code that is so fragile that if you try a major re-flash and there is a communication failure half way through all the ECUs are screwed. The cost to replace all the electronics can scrap the car.

I am sorry guys but speaking as someone who works in the industry you are massively oversimplifying the problem....believe me

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Speed camera policy Kills

As someone with a software background, I can appreciate the creativity and even beauty of something like a software application (I'm constantly amazed by the ability of my main techie - a bleeding edge Java man - to take my ideas of "I'd like something that can do this" - and turn them into reality.

Nevertheless the visual beauty and physical accessibilty of mechanical engineering in older cars is deeply satisfying. I stopped doing my own "mechanicking" when I sold my last kit car (a Dutton Phaeton "7" copy which I and my mechanic mate had modded to competetive sprint spec) and bought a Daimler which was full of "black boxes".

The electronic age has some serious problems associated with it in terms of posterity. Historians are genuinely worried by the lack of physical record and the issues of archiving the increasingly ephemeral.

Naah, you just hook up to the programming pins on the device (either in situ, or after popping the chip off the board) and reflash the entire thing - bootcode and all - with a separate programmer. If we're just talking about reflashing a handful of units on preserved cars in the future, as opposed to the n-thousands of units out there on a current model, then the cost of doing work like this wouldn't be a big deal.

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Chris

Surely the best way to get an old car from the current generation back up and running wouldn't be to try and fix the current ECU but to swap it for an aftermarket one.

Products like the GReddy eManage and the Megasquirt are currently popular with people doing major modifications, and there's no reason why one can't be fitted to a standard car (other than it being completely pointless right now).

I'm sure in 20 years time, someone will make an aftermarket ECU designed for running classic 90s and 00s cars and that classic car enthusiasts will be sharing maps on their forums.

It'll probably be easier than trying to put all the smoke back into a Lucas component.

Excellent thread!!!

First, I need to declare my allegiance. I'm a mechanical engineer and have a deep-seated loathing of things electrical because:

(a) I can't "see" them whilst they're working
(b) They look just the same when they're broken and when they're working.
(c) I can't understand them anyway!

That said, I used to drive an old Citroen DS with their own completely mechanical semi-automatic transmission and I have to say that while it was a jolly brave attempt, it couldn't hold a candle to the sheer flexibility of control stratergy of a modern electronically controlled system!

On the other hand, come on, be honest, what would you rather see pulling out of the station - a Virgin Pendolino or a Gresley Pacific?

No contest - surely?!

As the thread has brought up the problems of restoring modern vehicles, I thought I might chip-in there with my own two penn'oth as it is a subjet very close to me!

My dad is a mechanic approaching retirement age and he's glad that he is. Gone are the days when he could stick a business card between the contact breaker points and say "I don't know what the gap SHOULD be but that'll at least get you home mate". The next generation of people doing his job will need a laptop and diagnostic lead!

That said, for over ten years now, people have been saying that the end is nigh for DIY mechanics because of the electronic control systems. Everything was going to be "main dealer only" and, whilst the major manufacturers would dearly love this to be the case, it hasn't happened yet! The very electronic technology that they thought would keep non-franchised peoples' grubby little mits of their cars has actually come back to bite them in the butt in the shape of the Internet! Look on any of the SEAT technical forae and there will be links telling you where to get dodgy copies of the "VAG-COM" software. Aftermarket cats and lambda sensors are common now and the EU is going to force manufacturers to adopt a more standardised fault code logging architecture in the interest of consumer protection. In fact, by the time "Euro V" emissions limits come in, many of the diagnostic codes will be common knowledge and common to most makes of car sold in the EU.

Then, as has been said, there are complete aftermarket replacement systems to be had. The thing is, one electronic black box looks pretty much like another so "originality" in restoration is an area where I'm sure a point could be stretched! One only has to look at how many cars get stolen to see that where electronic immobilisers are concerned, "where there's a will, there's a way"!

Ironically, to my mind at least, the biggest problems facing me when I come to restore my beloved 1990s car will be mechanical rather than electronic. Someone, somewhere, I'm sure, will be able to do me a complete engine managment system from scratch if I need one. But where the hell am I going to get a big multi-part multi-material injection moulding like a dashboard from?????! Who on earth is going to re-tool to make a few hundred of these for the restoration market?!

Never mind. That's not today's problem! I've just finished making a set of valve spring collet retainers for a mate with a 1936 AJS (CAR? - I never even knew they made cars!) It was so simple to do with (basically) a file! the originals were never even hardened! HAPPY DAYS!!

That all depends on the failure mode Not that I'd ever do such a thing, but if you were to *ahem* accidentally *ahem* overload a poor innocent electrolytic capacitor, then I'm guessing (obviously, having never done this myself, you understand) the resultant explosion of foil and electrolyte goo all over the lab would be quite entertaining...


...I also seem to recall boiling a mug of water with a power resistor and a PSU with the current limiter set to its maximum - not really a practical way to make coffee during late light lab sessions due to the amount of crud that flaked off the resistor packaging in the process

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Chris

I was brought up in an engineering environment, as I had the extreme good fortune to have a stepfather who was a mechanical genius and could design and create the sort of intricate mechanical devices that were mentioned at the start of this thread.

As such there was always something wonderful and mechanical in the process of being designed or built or mended or dismantled, or simply the subject of a baffled headscratching session. It was an environment I fell in love with, along with its sounds, smells, textures, sleepless nights and moments of epiphany. By the time I'd reached adulthood I had gained an appreciation of an eclectic set of skills, but most were based around the combination of creative ingenuity and dogmatic persistence.

I had first hand experience of all aspects of car and light commercial vehicle restoration, sheet metal work, joinery, carpentry, foundry work, machining, fitting, electrical work, plumbing and even electronics; all against a backdrop of the traditional family business which was agriculture.

The strange twist in all of this is that it was this exposure, I believe, that gave me the perfect grounding to become a software developer. Basically it is all the same skills but with the added requirement of a strong ability to visualise abstract concepts. As Paul says it is every bit as creative and fascinating, and a good software or electronic solution has all of the beauty and elegance of an intricate mechanical engineering solution, it's just that it is to all intents and purposes imaginary, and only a select few can truly appreciate it. And the more you try to explain this beauty the more nerdy you appear!

If truth were known I have to say I'd be happier working with real mechanical things though, it's just that they don't pay so well, alas.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Depends on whether the smoke has escaped from the components

Ok OK!!!!

Leaving aside the obviously black and sooty ones (which, on cars, it has to be said, only seem to happen when someone has gone into a connector to an ECU with 21 watt test lamp looking for 12v)! Most of the dead ones I've ever seen just look like new ones except they don't work.

As JT says, the crucial difference is not being able to visualise what's happening. I have every respect and admiration for the people who CAN do it but alas, I ain't one of them!

(and I wish I was because as JT says, the oily bits don't pay as well)!

Yep, and when they fail they just go phut- its either working or its not. Mechanical things have the good grace to fail gradually; they wear out but work only not quite as well as they did before.

Ah, now that illustrates perfectly the difference in scale between electrics and electronics.

When I was an apprentice spark, one of the old timers party trick was to cook a sausage by the simple expedient of sticking a fork in either end then connecting it to the mains! There was enough moisture in the meat for it to start sizzling away after a few seconds.

Of course for the true effect this has to be done not as a cautious experiment, but with complete nonchalance, as though it is a perfectly normal everyday way of cooking...

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Quite so (and beautifully explained).

In the late 1970s I progressed from logic design (74 series TTL mostly) to assembly language programming. I also found that this required all the same mental skills, but came without the real world 'boring bits'.

With the logic design it was a constant battle with system noise, power supply decoupling, race hazards, lead lengths, broken wires, short circuits, failed components and so on. In the real world about half the design time was wasted with these rather boring practicalities.

We have lost something really significant from the art since those days - the need for economy of design. In the logic circuits, the objective was to build the system using the smallest possible number of components. In assembly language programming storage space was initially tiny and at a very high premium, and the equal challenge was to write the programme in the smallest number of bytes.

But these days you only need one chip (+interfaces) and storage has a virtually zero cost. the need for the 'elegance of economy' has gone to be replaced with 'shortest development time'. That's a damn shame.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I strongly believe that elegance of design will win out in the long term though.

In my line - Windows application development - these days everyone is a programmer, as there are so many easy development tools around such as Visual Basic. The result is that there is an increasing amount of appalling code around that has been developed by people with few of the necessary skills and merely satisfies the requirement - as you say - of shortest lead time to get some sort of solution working.

I have spent much of the last 5 years taking apart people's "solutions" such as these and coding them in a properly structured development environment, because the problem with the "quick fix" is they rarely work reliably, and more importantly they lack scalability and are well-nigh impossible to maintain.

And strangely enough, once you come to re-write code properly you find all the same rules still apply: despite memory being so cheap that as a resource it's damn near infinite, code that minimises memory usage works better and is easier to maintain. Similarly, we now have stupendously quick processors, yet code that minimises clock cycles is still clearly the best code. There is always a difficult balancing act between performance and simplicity, but that's where the creative design bit comes in (along with the dogmatic persistence as mentioned earlier!). I never imagined that even now I'd occasionally be dipping into 8086 assembler code but it happens with surprising frequency on the road to optimisation.

With more and more code being written by people with less and less expertise, it seems to me that good programming is possibly at more of a premium now than it has ever been.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!