MS-II left me stranded.

[cygnusx1]

I already brought this issue up with Matt Cramer and DIY Autotune said to send in my MS-II for a check over but then the problem went away so I decided to roll the dice and keep tuning. Well today, I drove to my parents house and had a father's day lunch. When it was time to go, the Z would not start. The MS-II will not boot up. It is getting all of the signals and the power and grounds but it wont boot. I tried hooking up the stim board with a separate power source, hooking up to the laptop, and to the megaview. Nothing I do will get the MS-II to boot. The LED's flicker on for a fraction of a second when I give it 12v power but then it just sits there lifeless. I pushed the car to the side of my parents driveway and pulled the MS-II out. I am going to try to reflash the code tonight on the bench and see if I can get it out of cardiac arrest. Otherwise I am going to take up Matt Cramers offer and send it in for a checkup or replacement. The car was running really well before the death.

[big-phil]

That happend to me. I reflashed it and it was fine. It got a power surge from somewhere?? I hope the reflash will solve your problem.

[cygnusx1]

Umm just a question...can I reflash if it's not powering up at all? Going to the megamanual now....bbl.

[mario_82_ZXT]

It needs to boot to be flashed. I don't know about MS-II as much but on MS-I you jumper 2 pins to cause it to go into a special bootloader and flash it that way (unless you're running a non B&G firmware).

 

I've never had one just die like that... There should be a few tests you can run on the assembly instructions page.

 

Good luck,

Mario

[cygnusx1]

It won't boot no matter what. I bought it assembled and my electronics skills are only good enough to get me into trubble so I am going to send the unit back to Matt for his diagnostic pleasure. I am sure it will be an interesting find and I will certainly share it here. The unit showed the same symptoms on the bench originally, but it was very intermittent, it happend once before in the car but it went away. Now it's permanent, so it should be easy to spot.

 

....Z-Less for a few days.

[Danno74Z]

cygnusx1,

 

I’m just learning about MSII and I have a question for you or really anybody who is in the know. Lets say you had a power surge and your voltage spiked to 15V or more how is the MSII protected? Is it internally protected or is it up to the installer to provide protection to the box. This is for down the road.

 

Thanks,

Danno74Z

[Careless]

go through the voltage diagnostics check using a mutli-meter.

 

ive repaired and modified a megasquirt v3.0 to reboot and use a vw ignition on a hyundai with never even seeing the car.

 

the trick is to follow instructions on the repair guide located on the website.

 

if it doesnt boot, i think it's most likely the 16 pin IC near com port, just north of the proto area , at the top left of the CPU. this integrated circuit (chip, as they're commonly known) is for the power circuit. I had the same problem, and did a switch to a new one and it worked fine.

 

it seems as though the person who tried to wire it up before made an error and shorted wires that fried the IC.

 

I believe that's the one:

 

 

good luck!

[Matt Cramer]

cygnusx1,

 

I’m just learning about MSII and I have a question for you or really anybody who is in the know. Lets say you had a power surge and your voltage spiked to 15V or more how is the MSII protected? Is it internally protected or is it up to the installer to provide protection to the box. This is for down the road.

 

Thanks,

Danno74Z

 

While it's best not to let this happen, there are a couple of components such as a metal oxide varistor that are designed to shunt high voltage spikes to ground.

[cygnusx1]

Matt, the MS-II is on the way to you right now. I firmly believe that this is a faulty "something" on the board. It exhibited intermittent bootup since day one on the bench with a DC power supply. I would have to cycle the DC supply two to three times sometimes to get it to boot up. On the bench, when it was connected to the Laptop or the Megaview unit, it would boot up consistently. All of a sudden yesterday, it decided to stop booting up. I'm sure it's going to be an easy fix and the support from DIY Autotune has been second to none so far. I am very pleased with the whole MS experience so far. After all, my Z is all one big experiment to me!

[z-ya]

go through the voltage diagnostics check using a mutli-meter.

 

ive repaired and modified a megasquirt v3.0 to reboot and use a vw ignition on a hyundai with never even seeing the car.

 

the trick is to follow instructions on the repair guide located on the website.

 

if it doesnt boot, i think it's most likely the 16 pin IC near com port, just north of the proto area , at the top left of the CPU. this integrated circuit (chip, as they're commonly known) is for the power circuit. I had the same problem, and did a switch to a new one and it worked fine.

 

it seems as though the person who tried to wire it up before made an error and shorted wires that fried the IC.

 

I believe that's the one:

 

 

good luck!

 

That IC is the RS232 translator. In simple terms, it translates the +5V logic levels to and from the CPU to RS232 levels that you PC can understand. If this device fails, the MS should still function, but MT won't work on your laptop.

 

cygnusx1, most likely the problem is an intermittent connection somewhere in the MS. A good visual inspection of all solder joints will reveal the cause.

[Careless]

That IC is the RS232 translator. In simple terms, it translates the +5V logic levels to and from the CPU to RS232 levels that you PC can understand. If this device fails, the MS should still function, but MT won't work on your laptop.

 

cygnusx1, most likely the problem is an intermittent connection somewhere in the MS. A good visual inspection of all solder joints will reveal the cause.

 

correct, i believe that is ONE of the ones i replaced, and that is what translates COM port input to work with the CPU. Thanks for the clarification on that.

 

However there WAS another one i replaced, now that I think about it.

 

u14 maybe? hmmmmm

[Slow_Old_Car]

sounds fairly similiar to an instance I had after going to the drag strip one time. had been there all evening making passes, went to leave and got all of a mile away, and my processor just died w/ out warning.

 

after the tow home, and going through some voltage tests w/ matt, we figured it to be the processor so i ordered 2 spares, flashed them on arrival w/ my code, and it lit right off.

 

to this day i still have no clue why it failed, and i always carry a spare pre-flashed processor now. this was all on v2.2 stuff though, and last i herd it's substantially more electrically fragile so who knows.

[Careless]

sounds fairly similiar to an instance I had after going to the drag strip one time. had been there all evening making passes, went to leave and got all of a mile away, and my processor just died w/ out warning.

 

after the tow home, and going through some voltage tests w/ matt, we figured it to be the processor so i ordered 2 spares, flashed them on arrival w/ my code, and it lit right off.

 

to this day i still have no clue why it failed, and i always carry a spare pre-flashed processor now. this was all on v2.2 stuff though, and last i hard it's substantially more electrically fragile so who knows.

 

in that case, i would try and look for a ZIF socket for the processor, so that it makes swapping them in and out a tad bit easier and less damaging to other components, since the board is a little crowded

[cygnusx1]

I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. It was intermittent before it failed so It may be an electro-mechanical problem, as Z-YA said, it could be just a cold solder joint. DIY is looking at it now.

[Matt Cramer]

I took a look at it when it arrived and it seemed dead. However, it started working again once I reloaded the firmware. So far this appears to be a code corruption issue.

[naviathan]

Code corruption seems to be a common problem with the MS-II CPU...Wonder why that is...? The last one I built and sold never even went in a car and before I sent it off I checked it out and had to reload the code because of the same thing, it appeared dead. Reloaded and let it run for a while without a problem. No idea, the persaon who bought it had no complaints. Loaded his msq and drove off.

[cygnusx1]

Hmm, how did you reload the firmware without the unit powering up?

[naviathan]

It might not light up any LEDs, but that doesn't mean it won't power up. That's why you should have done the voltage tests in the megamanual.

[cygnusx1]

Yeah but I could not establish any comm with the laptop either.

[Careless]

Yeah but I could not establish any comm with the laptop either.

 

then it could be the RS232 chip that I had mentioned earlier. The board I fixed needed the same fix, as the LED's werent on, and plugging in the stim and loading it on the computer did nothing either. But it did power up because once in a blue moon, i'd see an LED flash, so I knew some power was still making it somewhere down the board.