Yeah, that's better.

 

I have the same gripe about backwards compatibility with MS, but I don't even care because it works, and it still works well.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong. I love the MS platform and community, and I have an MS1 in my own car. I am not anti-MS.

I'm just **really** annoyed by a couple of specific design decisions which were made recently which resulted in the MS3 system turning out to be far more complex and expensive than it needed to me, and by the paranoid secrecy which surrounds the schematics of the MS3 processor board that are going to have no effect on counterfeiting but which make life more difficult for ordinary folks like myself.

 

The compromises made are well worth the upside, which is being able to upgrade to an MS3 without having to sell your ECU and buy a new one.

The PC industry boomed because the PC turned from a single board and P/S to a seperate number of parts, interchangeable and upgradeable.

As for the MS3 schematics...yeah, I didn't like it too when I didn't have them.

 

the bottom board issue wouldn't be a big deal if they allowed a 3rd part to design an optional replacement. they could still get there license fee from the processor and we wouldn't be stuck with the boat anchor bottom card.

 

You don't have to sell your ECU...

but you have buy a new $32 case, new $200 cpu board, new $90 expander card, new $72 cable harness. and then you have to rebuild some stuff on that precious mainboard.

Thankfully I started from scratch so I only had to populate a few components on the main board.

The PC Industry... seems to change just fast enough that I can never upgrade a computer without replacing the motherboard too :(

 

Right. Instead of being able to sell it, you have to dismantle it and throw most of it away, re-using only one single board which has, itself, been rendered mostly worthless by the fact that you're offloading the majority of the I/O to yet ANOTHER daughterboard mounted above it beside the first daughterboard.

Plus rebuild your vehicle's wiring harness.

And, of course, you presumably cannot drive your car during this process, which I'd wager most "normal" people (eg: non-engineers) probably won't get done in a single weekend.

Honestly, I would love to know how many people have upgraded from an MS1/2 to an MS3, keeping the same main board, vs. the number of people who have just bought/built a new MS3 from scratch. I cannot imagine that the relatively trivial number of upgraders justifies the compromises imposed upon everyone else.

It's just a shitty design that sacrificed a lot of elegance for a pipe-dream of backwards-comparability. The MS3 should have been a single-board design, incorporating the functionality of the MS3X and the power supply / MAP / analog inputs into a new Rev 4.0 board. Instead, we have a ******* science-fair of an ECU to deal with, that costs twice as much as it needs to.



(takes a deep breath.)



I do still love and support the MegaSquirt project. I'm hoping that we can get it right on the next try.

 

 

You don't have to buy ANYTHING other than the case and the new CPU board. Once you sell your old MS2 CPU (say $50 so that it sells fast), you are looking at ~$180 for the upgrade VS selling your old ECU and building it from scratch again (time is money^2).

 

is this:



???

 

 

Better, get more glue in there so that it covers all of the heatshrinks.

I now glue a full 3" from the connector.

 

 

 

 

mmmmmmmmmm.......

 

 

for reals, im running out of sticks and i got two more to do today!

 

I buy 4 pounds worth of sticks every time I go to my source.

 

Came across and old FDD while cleaning today. Noticed it still had a disk in it.