Does any one have any experience with using the ostrich from Craig Moates? On the website it says that the AAA battery should last 75 years! Does that mean that you could just install the ostrich, and never remove it, and never program another chip?
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
Tony??? Where are ya?
look for 2literturbo. He's got a Moates emulator in his car... I believe it's the Ostrich, but not sure. Works nice imo. I'm planning to replace my Romulator with the Moates hardware in the future.
FWIW, I've had a Romulator in my 93 Cav for 2 yrs now. It's almost time to replace it with a "real" eprom.
Have fun.
-->Slow
I'm here buddy. I have the Autoprom actually. The Ostrich is similar to the Romulator except it's USB instead of, uh, not USB.
I like my Autoprom a lot! It's expensive but it can read chips, burn chips, emulate, check engine codes, datalog, etc. I think it can shine pennies and cut wafer thin French Fries too.
Now if I only knew what I was doing with it....
Tony
Tony
1987 Sunbird GT turbo convert
Ported intake, Fiero 53 MM TB, 52 lb inj, ported and flowed head, tube header, Mitsu TD06, ARP rod
bolts/head studs, adj cam sprocket, 4" x 12" x 31" FMIC, Paxton AFPR, modified 125 trans/LSD
unit/3.42's, custom chip tuning, Alky Control Methanol injection
13.61 ET at 101.44 mph, 262 WHP/350WTQ
2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP roadster, 2.0 turbo w/GMPP exh, CAI and turbo upgrade, 290 hp/325 ft lbs
1969 Olds 442 convert
400 Eng, 200-4R trans, 3.73 posi, power everything, OAI
That still doesn't answer the question though
Can you just leave the ostrich hooked to your ecm and never burn a chip except when the batts die every 75 years.
A direct quote "Robust, USB-based realtime EPROM emulation in the palm of your hand! Battery backup lasts 75 years (standard AAA), so you can leave it in the car if you want to."
here's the link also if i'm taking it out context...
http://www.moates.net/index.php?cPath=50
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
I have answered my own question and thought I would pass on the awesome info... All you guys out there wasting you're time burning chip listen well this is a direct quuote from thrid gen.org. Here's the thread link if you want to read the whole thing
http://thirdgen.org/techbb2/showthread.php?s=&threadid=262420&highlight=ostrich
But here's the kicker... you better head this monster....
Since Craig's probably asleep (wait, what am I saying?!), I'll answer your questions if only for promptness:
- Yes, the purpose of the batteries is to save the bin for when the Ostrich is connected to neither the car nor the laptop (both of which would be a power source). So yes, you can run your car for 74 years off of the Ostrich. Any longer and you're going to need new batteries. No need for a chip.
- The Ostrich is just an emulator. So comparing to the AutoProm, its just the emulation portion, no chip burner/reader, no ALDL interface, no additional A/D.
Preemptively:
- The Ostrich will function fully with TunerPro, and will work great with TunerCat's RT Tuner.
- It can emulate chips up to 4 MBit.
- The Ostrich will be available in USB only. Your system will have to have a USB port. If it doesn't, but it has a PCMCIA slot available, Craig has some PCMCIA 4-port USB host cards available at a very, very reasonable price (Craig can confirm, but I believe its around $20).
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
Quote:
That still doesn't answer the question though
But I said "I've had a Romulator in my 93 Cav for 2 yrs now." If you'd done a little reading about the Romulator you would have found it's a different company's version of the Ostrich! In fact, the Romulator was out
before the Ostrich. The Romulator is serial port based, while Ostrich is USB. Depending on the make of laptop and the OS installed, the choice might be based on that factor alone.
While it's very cool to be able to make real time changes, it's certainly not necessary. I always recommend that people look into using an emulator, but folks worrying about spending a bunch of cash to get started can buy a couple of EEproms or Flash chips for quite a bit less than an emulator.
Nice to see someone else looking into burning their own calibrations. The more poeple do it, the easier it will get for everyone.
-->Slow
2literturbo wrote:I'm here buddy. I have the Autoprom actually. The Ostrich is similar to the Romulator except it's USB instead of, uh, not USB.
I like my Autoprom a lot! It's expensive but it can read chips, burn chips, emulate, check engine codes, datalog, etc. I think it can shine pennies and cut wafer thin French Fries too.
Now if I only knew what I was doing with it....
Tony
Tony,
about the autoprom... can you pretty much do the same thing with the autopromthat you can with theostrich... can you leave it plugged in and hide it under the dash as well? I'm getting ready make the purchase but have recently decided that ALDL datalogging would be nice and that I ahve the money to go all out and buy what I need to, to get the job done correctly. The auto prom is USB, with no power back up. but the memory in it is nonvolotile and can't be erased even if you drive somewhere without the laptop, and the battery dies, it'll still hold the memory. Am I right in thinking that way? I'm going to get my 93 octane tune down then do the switch to e85 before fall, and I'm going to want to be able to switch between the two pretty easy, so I want to leave the autoprom in. I don't want to have to switch chips everytime I change fuels. or am running half and half...I'm having trouble getting answers on these things from moates.net forums. Also could you make a short list of everything I'll need to start tuning? Which adaptor, and which .zif socket etc. I'm having troubles locating that information as well. and just to verify we have the 7749 computer correct? Anything else that you can think of that I may need to know as a heads up?
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
Yes, we have the 7749 ecm.
In a perfect world you could work on a Bin, leave it "in" the Autoprom (or Ostrich) and if it ran as you liked you could forget all about it. Unfortunately, I've found when you get a Bin where you like it you'll be so much better off to burn a chip of it. Things happen, Bin's dissapear, stuff you thought was saved vanishes, etc. I've found if you don't plug in your cables and load and save your work in the proper sequence you'll be sorry and pulling your hair out over it! That's why I highly recommend burning a chip when you get something working the way you like it. That's a benefit of the Autoprom over the Ostrich or any other emulator I've seen - it can burn a chip. If I can do it truly anyone can do it. I'll bet my 3 year old could do it!
Things you'll need? Well, a laptop for starters.
The Autoprom. The Zif socket (I love the Aries one). A few chips to play with (I like the 29C256 flash chips but he says they're pretty much gone so you have to use the 27SF512 and offset it). I bought the GP1 kit since it includes what you need to get going. If you want to burn a chip for gas and one for E85 you could buy one of his switching adaptors too. You'll also need a Definition file if you use Tunercat or a XDF file for Tunerpro. Those are free off the Internet.
If you want to datalog I don't believe Tunerpro allows you to do that while emulating so you'd have to use a different program like Datamaster or something. If that's the way you go you'll need a cable to go from the ALDL to your laptop. You can datalog with Tunerpro just not while you emulate. I could be wrong on that though since the guy who created Tunerpro (Mark Mansur) is creating fixes for any problems all the time.
Don't hesitate to email me at olzkng@aol.com with any questions. Also, email Craig Moates if you have any questions about his products or Mark Mansur about Tunerpro. If you're going to give them your money they better be willing to answer a few questions right? My dealings with them have been fast and easy.
Tony
Tony
1987 Sunbird GT turbo convert
Ported intake, Fiero 53 MM TB, 52 lb inj, ported and flowed head, tube header, Mitsu TD06, ARP rod
bolts/head studs, adj cam sprocket, 4" x 12" x 31" FMIC, Paxton AFPR, modified 125 trans/LSD
unit/3.42's, custom chip tuning, Alky Control Methanol injection
13.61 ET at 101.44 mph, 262 WHP/350WTQ
2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP roadster, 2.0 turbo w/GMPP exh, CAI and turbo upgrade, 290 hp/325 ft lbs
1969 Olds 442 convert
400 Eng, 200-4R trans, 3.73 posi, power everything, OAI
Direct quote from craig Moates over at moates.net
"No, the only way you can emulate and datalog at the same time is if you do both from within TunerPro. However, you can do one or the other if you flip the switch, just not both at once."
So that ones ok...
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
Where do you get teh definition files from?
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
Thanks for the help man!
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
FYI, i run the autoprom in a 96 cavi with 95 ecm. This is an awesome piece of hardware, and is allow us to move forward with the 16196285 ecm project.
What kind of vehicle are you looking to run a ostrech in, craig is a good buddy of mine and he is working with me on the odb1 ecm project for jbody.
I've decided to go autoprom, but may do the ostrich someday if for nothing else to have the ford tuning capabilities. (I have a wreck 03 zx2 escort that I may play with in the future)
It's in a 1990 sunbird GT turbo hard top, with an auto tranny. If you hop over to my profile you can see all of the mods I've done and a few pics. Mostly rebuilding, tgp turbo, injectors, and a fpr.
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors
I'm almost positive the last version of Tunerpro allows Ford computer mods. I think it does Subaru's and some other foreign cars too. I'm pretty sure you'll like the Autoprom Aaron. First time you burn a chip you'll feel like a computer genius.
Tony
Tony
1987 Sunbird GT turbo convert
Ported intake, Fiero 53 MM TB, 52 lb inj, ported and flowed head, tube header, Mitsu TD06, ARP rod
bolts/head studs, adj cam sprocket, 4" x 12" x 31" FMIC, Paxton AFPR, modified 125 trans/LSD
unit/3.42's, custom chip tuning, Alky Control Methanol injection
13.61 ET at 101.44 mph, 262 WHP/350WTQ
2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP roadster, 2.0 turbo w/GMPP exh, CAI and turbo upgrade, 290 hp/325 ft lbs
1969 Olds 442 convert
400 Eng, 200-4R trans, 3.73 posi, power everything, OAI
The way I understand it, the autoprom doesnt' have the power to tune the EEC-V that's in the scort. It took me some time to realize I had to load the .df reference file, then the bin, and the open the table to actually see anything... I think the ostrich is the only thing that moates has with enough power to do the scort though. I'll wait and see exactly how slow the scort is and if it's worth messing with. I may just drive it because it's so slow...
1990 Pontiac Sunbird GT turbo
-TGP turbo
-DSM SMIC turned TMIC
-Injectors