Re: A4 Chip

[spowers@spdg.COM (Steve Powers)]

Peter (The Outlaw) sez:
> 
> The A4 is one of the first Audi's with OBDII and as such it will be
> difficult to do a chip for it. The chip itself is an EEPROM and it is
> soldered to the board. This means 2 things. 

Yup... (almost)
 
> 1) The first one is going to have to be unsoldered from the board to be
> read, simply to get the base data. 

not necessarily... If Bosch utilizes modern manufacturing testability
practices, you may be able to read the data with a clip..
 
> 2) The chip is then going to be reprogrammed and soldered back on the board
> or it will be soldered back on the board and then the computer reprogrammed.

again, if they used pulldown resistors, etc., any decent prom programmer
will overdrive the proper select lines - obviating the need to risk screwing
up your board (e.g. improper de-soldering techniques).. A certain local
company commes to mind...
 
> Without denigrating Dinan in any way, I doubt if they have sorted out the
> link to the computer yet, but then they might have, bearing in mind their
> expertise with BMW computers. Certainly, that other internationally famous
> company Superflips hasn't got it sorted yet and they pull the chip and
> solder it back in. But I hear they are working on the link :)
> 
> They did think of obtaining a core computer but the high cost and poor
> availability outweighed the potential profit bearing in mind the small
> number of potential sales at the moment.
> 
> The gain you can expect from the conversion will be about 10% in HP and
> 10-15% more torque. The cost of lending your car to Dinan for a week is high
> compared to a $200-400 chip. Thats the way Dinan get their development cars.

Yup... they've really got to run the piss out of it to test it - I'll let
someone else develop the S6 chip, thank you... Besides, until they've
tested it, they won't know the limits - it ain't tested 'til it's tested...

> One thing you can be sure of is that it is unlikely you will get a better
> chip for your money elsewhere.

Unless they have <ahem>, testing problems... <gulp>

-steve powers   '95.5 S6 ... '95 620RX/C ... '91 K100RS-16V ... '88 R100S
spowers@spdg.com                                      seattle, washington

"I must tell you that these are strong Bavarian beer-carrying horses,
not the smaller ones of Italy" (Ferdinand Piech)