What exactly is
emulation and what can it do for me?
Emulation is the ability to put an auxiliary
piece of hardware in place of the EPROM or EEPROM that contains
the code your ECM runs. Put simply, its a very powerful replacement
for your "chip". Where it is powerful is its ability
to speed up and simplify the steps in tuning an EFI system.
Without emulation, the tuning process typically
looks like this:
1) Read bin from chip
2) Load bin
3) Modify bin
4) Save bin
5 ) Erase chip
6 ) Burn new image to chip
7 ) Insert chip in ECM
8 ) Test drive car, noting changes
9 ) Drive home
10 ) Pull chip from ECM/Adapter
11 ) go back to step 2 until car is tuned sufficiently
With emulation, the process looks roughly like
this:
1) Read bin from chip
2) Load bin into emulator
3) Drive car to determine changes needed
4) Pull over, make changes
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until tune is established
6) Save bin
7) Erase Chip
8) Program final chip
The key here is that no longer must you make
changes and burn a new chip. The time required to tune is cut
at least in half.
Most emulation hardware even provides the ability
to make changes while the engine is running! This is great when
you have an assistant in the passenger seat to make your changes.
You don't even have to pull over!
What emulators
does TunerPro RT support?
Transtronics
Romulator I and Romulator II, Craig
Moates's emulation products (e.g. Ostrich and Ostrich 2.0, Roadrunner, Demon), Bill
Hitchcock's Prominator.
