My friend recently had his 2003 Evo tuned at a local shop who used ECU Flash. After he melted a piston, I offered to take a quick look at his tune to see if anything major stood out to me. I connected to his car with a Tactrix 2.0 cable, and downloaded his ROM (ECU Flash v 1.43.3150), and it could not open it.

I have the entire Tephra pack of xml files in my metadabase, and still can't open it. I then figured his tune might be locked, so I tried ECU Unlocker and this also failed. I even let his car idle a few minutes before pulling the tune (and he has a new battery) to ensure it wasn't a voltage issue.

Any ideas? I think it may be locked, but why can't I unlock it? I've uploaded the file to see if anyone else can open it or has suggestions. Thanks.

 

I can't open it either which means it doesn't have a standard definition file. It must have been changed.

 

Thanks hearnoevo. Anyone else have any ideas?

 

I had this problem when downloading the stock ROM from my JDM Evo VIII but then found the right xml's for me to open it. I just tried opening the file too, no good!

 

Damn... anyone else?

 

if you open the file with another XML it says the Internal ID is 84185028 if you look at address f52

not sure if that helps any

cheers

 

hmmm... Still no luck. I think the guy that tuned the car might be an IT developer. Is it possible he has his own custom ROMs that people won't be able to open?

 

I saw this as well. I tried to make a new xml with this rom id number and include tables from 94170015 or 94170715 to try and see if I could fake it. It sort of works..Im still playing with it. Not sure if it has tephra at all or if it is V5 or V7? I have to find my V5 xml's but its been a while since ive used it so they may be deleted. There is also a chance that its not a tephra rom at all. however the xml that I have attached gets you past the ecul flash error and you can at least see the fuel and timing maps. When i tried with v7 xml tables the big maps looked completly wrong for the ignition and fuel so im leaning towards it maybe not being V7. Or its just not a 9470015 base.... Thats just a common one for most USDM 03 gsr's

If there is a specific table your looking for the values i may be able to try and get just that one to work.

Be sure to change the file extension to ".xml" and add it to your rommetadata folder under evo.

Ethan

 

Yeah.. It opens it, but some of the tables are "scrambled" and also, when I scroll down the left-hand column far enough it causes ECU Flash to stop working and I have to terminate the process in Windows.

 

Ok I think I got it. It looks like this rom has a base of ROM ID 96530006 which is a "universal" Evo 8 ROM ID (I forgot about this one). I attached a txt file that you can try as the xml deffinition for this rom. I was able to open it and all the tables I looked at were good with the exception of the tephra mod options. The xml has table definitions for tephra v5.10 which are scrambled most likely because this is not a "patched" ROM. My OEM xml for 96530006 had litterally almost not tables in it so it was useless. Im working with a fairly early version of ECU Flash here..

Anyway give this one a try.

Ethan

 

btw just to give credit I found another thread with someone having a similar problem. Their rom ID was also this 84185028 so it wasnt made up i would assume. unless its the same guy. For sure its not a commone id though and is copied from 96530006 xml. In the hex file i guess there are a few strings that contain the 96530006 rom id number. I was thinking about trying to dig into the hex file but wasnt sure how to go about it...

anyway let me know if it works for you.

 

There is no rom of that number. Someone obfuscated it.

 

^

Edit: I went back to the thread that also talked about this weird rom id number and downloaded the rom that this guy posted. I was curious and wanted to check it out. So far it appears to the EXACT same ROM. Same timing and fuel and weird disabled knock control settings.

It just makes the situation that more f'ed up. If anyone is insterested in the other thread here is the link bind-rom-not-reading-urgent

Not much is really said in there but the hex file is posted. The guy is from NH not CT....and this was about a year ago exactly.

 

Nuts dude! What a crappy situation!