[1023vaughn]

That is a really sexy setup.

It cool that it's built from retired units. I bet that saved a ton of money because to build that from scratch would be prohibitively expensive! All the stuff in our server rack is now new stuff, replaced and added to over the years as needed. I've debated dumping the Windows install on the 1 server and just migrating it to Linux, but it works well, never crashes, and I just don't feel like messing with it right now. The other 2 full stack Linux servers are great, with one being a redundant mirror of the main Linux server. They never give me a fuss and will run for years without ever needing a reboot. I'm really enjoying learning my way around Linux.

Thank you. Its as long way from what I want and came a long way from where it started. I have built that entire equipment stack in the reverse order Linux hypervisors and windows VMs, for tons of reasons with my windows network I bit the bullet and when Hyper-v FC and built in that redundancy. To be fair though just the base OSs would be valued at about $200k last I did the numbers based on that hardware, so not really a production option as I got my keys through University . At the peak of the operation I could obtain 100% uptime even with in place Windows updates with CA updates and vms not miss a beat. But with used/old hardware you get the downtime of when one of your 64 main memory modules in a machine needs to be re-seated or just dies. But such is the home-lab life.

Anything you want to throw on a drive and send my way?

Possibly, but I wouldn't expect its anything you haven't already seen or been responsible for in one form or another.

As I started working on breaking down calibrations even further, we started doing some really... um... "interesting" stuff. We would acquire a vehicle by putting ads on the website offering a free chip for anyone willing to let us test and tune on the dyno. We'd then get the vehicle strapped down and get the emulator plugged into the J3 port. We'd load the file for the vehicle, fire it up and start driving. All of this seems pretty ordinary, right? Yeah, well hold onto your hat. This is where it gets interesting.

This is probably one of the coolest methods I have heard of and nowadays never have the ability to do in this market and be respected

Anyway, as sad as this may sound, they only thing we were changing in the files in 1997 was timing, open loop fuel, and standard shift points. Rev and Speed limiters as well, if we could find them. But to be honest, that's still all that's really needed to make a decent tune nowadays and I find it interesting how much stuff can be changed unnecessarily with no real improvement in performance.

Not sad, innovative lol. Over the years I have been humbled by this idea in a general sense. What really needs to be done to make a good running vehicle and make a customer happy.

Now keep in mind that when I went into this, I still had NO IDEA what a Normalizer function was. I was going on the assumption that the X and Y axis on a table was static (much like the way GM does their tables. It was quite by accident that I found out when I changed a specific function on a Mustang, the timing curve quit changing. When I went and looked back at the timing table, I saw that the ROM-Watch was no longer jumping around the screen. This revelation completely changed my fundamental understanding of the EEC-IV/V PCMs and changed the way I tuned. I still had to go back into the older stuff (meaning we needed more test vehicles) and figure out which Normalizers went to which axis of which table. This was a pain, to say the least, but it at least gave us the ability to provide a considerable improvement over any earlier tuning we'd created. We were now able to control tables into much higher Load and RPM ranges (say, for a supercharged application) so that we had better resolution where we needed it. It really was quite a leap from where we were before.

Aside from Scalars, EEC FN's have definitely taken me the most time to wrap my head around. I have notebooks of hand traced EEC assembly and lots of time spend understanding FN's and lookups. Scalars seem to come rather easy for me when looked up in code context, otherwise nearly impossible to understand. (All mostly because I have little motivation, and I'm too cheap to do it the hardware/real way)

so Superchips would include a "boost fooler" with every chip. This consisted of a 1/8" brass tube with a hole drilled in it which would be placed inline with the MAP sensor to keep it from seeing accurate boost. Sketchy, I know. But it worked.

By far what I spend most of my day diagnosing, MAP and MAP related devices.

This was how much of the tuning I did was handled in the late '90s. It was hard hacked. No decompilers or anything like that. Understanding Binary Shifts, realizing the way Strategy structures broke down into specific groups, understanding Hardware IDs, and even things like figuring out how to checksum the files to prevent P0605 code I had to figure out on my own. It was certainly a challenge, to say the least.

Yeah... Without a doubt I'm blessed to live in this information age.

This is how it went, and I honestly think that the experience helped to make me a better engineer. I was forced to problem solve. I was forced to work in HEX. I was forced to figure it out on my own, and only after I had a pretty solid understanding of what I was looking at did we receive any outside help. I'm grateful for that experience. It was an exciting time to be on the forefront of the tuning industry and being on of the people that was making things happen. It was something I took pride in and it was very personal to me.

This doesn't go unappreciated (I'm sure by a lot of people).

I'm sure you realize, how tuning has changed over the years. HEX gave way to 3D Graphs. 8 and 16 Bit binaries progressed into 32 Bit Float values. OBD-II flash replaced the infamous J3 port. However, chips are still a solid market because the Power Stroke 7.3L simply will not die. It has a following that rivals many of the iconic vehicles of yesteryear. Mustangs... Camaros... Corvettes... Stuff like that. It is now 25 years after the first Power Stroke 7.3L hit the street and 17 years after the last one was sold, and they're still highly sought after by fans and enthusiasts.

I've been in this industry 23 years and I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. I love the challenges of discovering new things, creating new things, and helping to support an industry that is very near and dear to me.

Anyway, I hope this helps you to understand just how bass-ackwards things were in the beginning. If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have believed it.

Your products and so much more have helped keep my lights on, my EDU bills paid up, and funded lots of projects like the ones above. Not to mention all of the knowledge and experience I have now. I know its a privilege to spend 5-8 hrs/day in Minotaur producing 100+ of files per day, and really everything else I play with is purely for educational purposes. Some weeks tuning about 100 new Hydra chips per week. I'm still shocked every day by the growing number of just 7.3s we deal with.

Thank you also for entertaining my questions, and I hope it built the thread for others.