Recoding instrument cluster after Carsoft screwup

[maxic]

I made the mistake of trying to use Carsoft to code my E39. Now the instrument cluster says "EEPROM-KI" when I start the car, tach is at 0, OBC and clock are dead, and fuel consumption gauge dances all over the place.

I did some reading, and my understanding is that Carsoft messed up the EEPROM contents in the instrument cluster. The possible fixes are:

1. New cluster (this is what all dealers will tell me, and most indies too) - major $$.
2. Used cluster - less $$, but requires carefull repgrogramming with PA Soft or similar.
3. Get a known good dump from the cluster of a sufficiently similar E39, write it to my car with PA Soft, then adjust to fit the car - the costs are minimal ($30 to get the software from China), but requires a good dump.

Am I missing anything? Simpler alternatives may be? And if I decide to use option 3, is there a source of dumps I could use? My car is a '02 525iT 5 speed, though it had its cluster replaced in '05 - the current one is 62106942197, hw: 25, sw: 21.

[IcemanBHE]

or 4. Reprogram with SSS/Progman.

[maxic]

So the more conventional tools work too? That's good. I'm actually in the process of getting all of that on my laptop.

But then how do I know what exactly to reprogram? Or will Progman automagically fix it for me?

[champaign777]

flash your DME
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1457686

[maxic]

flash your DME
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1457686

My problem has nothing to do with the DME. It is limited to the IKE.

[Snowcatxx87]

I think the best way is to go to s/w in SSS and choose no for retrofitting, and reprogram the module.

[IcemanBHE]

^ agreed.

[Edwin NL]

Just the cluster, not the DME!

[nah2323]

Option 5, You call me, and I perform option 4.

[TerraPhantm]

Like the others said, try reprogramming it w/ Progman/SSS. If carsoft wiped out the VIN along with everything else, this will probably work.

[maxic]

Finally, I got Progman working, and I tried the suggestion. I connected to the car, selected retrofit - no, then encoding, and waited for the process to complete.

I can report partial success. The clock and the OBC are back. The tach is still dead. The EEPROM-KI message is still there. Though I haven't driven the car yet - maybe it needs some mileage to reset completely?

And a bit off topic: considering how painful complete Progman install was, I'm surprised nobody ever uploaded a fully built VM to the internetz. I will remedy the situation in the nearest future. Though my setup is slightly weird: I run EDIABAS in XP Mode VM on my laptop, and Progman in VMware Workstation on my desktop, and they talk over home wifi.

[champaign777]

my 0.02c
this may work but very slow
just increase your hard/operation memory, this should be better solution, Progman itself is way to slow application

[maxic]

my 0.02c
this may work but very slow
just increase your hard/operation memory, this should be better solution, Progman itself is way to slow application

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying the coding could be affected by the application speed? Because I used Wireshark to keep an eye on the traffic between EDIABAS and Progman, and it definitely looked like the slowest part of the whole setup was the serial interface itself.

[maxic]

I think I'm progressing towards completely messing up the cluster. Let me describe everything I've done by now, in detail.

First, my setup. I'm running INPA/EDIABAS in XP Mode Virtual PC inside Win 7-64, with USB-to-serial adapter built on Prolific PL-2303, USB passthrough into the XP Mode, with the adapter driver in the VM (as opposed to mapping a Win7 serial port to the VM - I tried it, and it didn't work), and a Carsoft cable. I have Carsoft in XP Mode too, and I have Progman as a VMware VM on another PC on the home network. Carsoft has no issues talking to the car; INPA throws IFH-0003 errors pretty regularly (depends on the module it's talking to, usually it talks to the module for a little while, then errors); Progman seems to work fine, though I won't be surprised if it actually has issues, but never pops the message.

Now, the sequence of events.

1. I tried using Carsoft to program door un/lock. In the same screen, it shows mpg-l/km, 12h-24h, and it didn't look right, so I adjusted those too and had Carsoft write the values. This killed OBC, tach, clock, consumption gauge, fuel gauge and caused "EEPROM-KI" error message.

2. Using Progman v32, I retrofitted the IKE per the suggestions above. It gave me back clock and OBC. Seeing some kind of progress, I decided to adjust CKM to my preferences. It worked well, with one exception: I have an E39 Touring that has Euro tails, and its LCM was reprogrammed for that. When I changed settings, it reverted back to US (ZCS was set to US in IKE and EWS, so that's what Progman followed).

3. When I realized that LCM was no longer configured the way I wanted, I used NCS Expert to recode it back. The procedure is to code IKE, LCM, and EWS for Euro settings (single bit in GM line of ZCS), then code IKE and EWS, but not LCM back to US. This produced the desired result, even though I had IFH-0003 popping up all the time.

Today I realized that my speedometer was no longer matching my seat-of-the-pants-o-meter. I checked it against the car's OBC and a GPS, and the speedo is reading 5mph lower than actual speed. It used to be slightly higher, reading about 7% above real speed. So I guess somewhere along the way I also messed up the calibration values.

I'm wondering if it's possible to find proper FSW_PSW file from a '01-'03 525i (Touring would be ideal, but not necessary) to compare my values with the known good ones. Or am I going in the wrong direction again?

[maxic]

Bumping the thread. I reinstalled Carsoft and INPA without a VM right in Win7-64 (the key here is running all installation executables and the utilities themselves in XP compatibility and as administrator), which resulted in reliable communication with the car from INPA. So, I tried Progman again. No luck. I'm starting to suspect that Progman encoding procedure doesn't touch on all places that Carsoft corrupted.

I guess I need some more expert attention to this thread.

[xaxis360]

After coding with SSS, have you tried Unplugging the battery for a few minutes?

[maxic]

No. When exactly in the process should I do it?

[TerraPhantm]

just so you know, if you write the zcs changes to the car, progman won't overwrite the settings

[maxic]

I'm not sure I understand this statement. Does it mean I should reset ZCS to its original value before using Progman?

[Asrafil]

Any update on this situation? I messed up mine 2 years ago and still haven't found a solution.

[TerraPhantm]

I'm not sure I understand this statement. Does it mean I should reset ZCS to its original value before using Progman?

Enter whatever your ZCS was originally in NCS Expert, do the job "ZCS_SCHREIBEN" on the "new" cluster. Now if you use Progman to reset anything, it'll do it for the options and region of your car instead of whatever car the cluster came from.

[maxic]

Enter whatever your ZCS was originally in NCS Expert, do the job "ZCS_SCHREIBEN" on the "new" cluster. Now if you use Progman to reset anything, it'll do it for the options and region of your car instead of whatever car the cluster came from.

I didn't replace the cluster, I only corrupted its EEPROM contents. I believe it still has the correct ZCS.

I'm about to receive PA Soft 1.4.0 kit I ordered on eBay. (I had 1.3.6, but I couldn't make it work with my laptop, and it was more complicated to use than the newer version anyway). It's a Chinese clone, but it seems their quality is better now than it used to be a few years ago. I'll report the results.

[TerraPhantm]

Ah. Well if you want to switch it to euro, just change the 4th digit in the GM string from 3 to 1, and let it recalculate the checksum

[maxic]

I don't need to switch it to Euro - that's already done. Moreover, Euro coding is more applicable to LCM, not IKE. And with PA Soft I can actually make it more granular: for example, Euro LCM coding enables rear foglight testing, triggering check message. After 5 minutes with PA Soft, the message is gone.

Anyway, that's coding. What I need is programming capability. PA Soft has it, but I'm not sure if any of the bin files I was able to locate is going to work. I'm not going to try until the weekend.

[IcemanBHE]

Yikes.