You know, I just did a whole bunch of thinking and trying to remember just how convoluted and complicated the process used to be to get Phoenix chips shipped out of here. I had to dig way back in the dusty corners of my mind for it.
I might be missing a few steps but I remember it was a tedious process!
1. Log into remote computer.
2. Get to the order forms and write down the customer vehicle information. I had literally FOUR full-size notebooks full of names, email addresses, and calibration information; each one took up four lines of wide-ruled front and back - so long as nothing custom was needed. No security worries though as every one of them was used to start a fire in the woodstove.
3. Go to the 32k files and dig out appropriate calibrations. If it happened to be a custom tune, it was written at that time.
4. Load them into the utility that turned them into Phoenix-size calibrations.
5. Save an e-mail of each calibration in the drafts folder along with a copy of the invoice and build sheet and then log off of the remote desktop.
[Ahhhhh. No more click latency due to remote desktopping after this point]
6. Open email on my computer at home and save the calibrations.
7. Open PhoenixFlash.
8. Spend 5:52 per chip erasing and programming. The most difficult part here is that I found that multi-tasking the computer during the process would result in errors and there is no continuing with a botched programming session.....start all over (usually ftom position 5 or 6 because, well Murphy). Sometimes the errors would happen anyway and sometimes I'd forget if I changed the position or not before programming the next position. I'd know as soon as I hit the spacebar! Long beep and the red "Programming Error" message. SHIIIIIIII!!!
9. Package the chip. I got good at folding small flat-rate boxes!
10. Repeat. Although I did manage to save time by doing large batches of calibrations at once and then emailing numerous customers' calibrations in 2-3 emails.
You know, those were good times although I do like getting greasy and dirty just a touch more than staring at a computer screen.
