What is emulation?

Emulation in this case is the ability of a special piece of hardware to "act like" a chip (EPROM or EEPROM). When changes are made to the chip image on the host PC, the car's computer sees these changes in real time. This means the changes are active as soon as they are updated. This is a very valuable feature as it allows for rapid tuning. No longer is it necessary to burn a chip after each change is made. Instead, a change can be made on the side of the road (*never* drive and make changes at the same time), updated, and the car can immediately be test driven, then more changes, test drive, etc. A weekend of tuning becomes an hour of tuning.

Emulation Hardware

In order to emulate, a special piece of hardware is needed (the emulator itself). There are a few companies that offer this hardware. Currently TunerPro RT is compatible with Transtronic's Romulator and Craig Moates' AutoProm. These devices plug in between the host PC and the car's computer. On the car side, the emulator plugs into the socket that the car's chip normally plugs in to. On the host PC side, the emulator generally plugs into the serial port. The emulator has in memory the active image of the chip, and the car runs off of this buffered data. The emulator allows changes to be made to thsi buffer while the car accesses the information.

Using TunerPro RT to emulate

To emulate using TunerPro RT:

1) Hook up your emulation hardware per the manufacturers instructions

2) Start the program. If the hardware was installed properly and is properly connected, it should be auto-detected at application startup. If you connect the hardware after starting TunerPro, you'll need to initialize it by selecting "Initialize Attached Hardware" from the Tools menu or the RT toolbar.

3) Load the bin you wish to use as you normally would when editing, and load the bin definition as you normally would.

4) It may be helpful to open the emulation toolbar from the view->toolbars menu or by right-clicking in the main toolbar.

5) Press the "Upload Current Bin" button. This loads the currently active bin (in TunerPro) into the emulation hardware's buffer.

6) You may optionally verify the upload by pressing the "Verify" button. Doing so is recommended.

6) Press the "Enable Emulation" button.

You are now emulating! Changes that are made in an editor are uploaded to the emulator when the "Update" button is pressed.

See Also:

Emulation Toolbar