Yeah not enough net outcome on 24x for my money but hey go for it.. Be prepared to spend a ton of time in addition to your money on that deal.

 

Jay, you might try looking up SIA Electronics in Illinois and ask them to repair it for you. They do this all the time so they can probably be efficient about testing and repairing it. A little of four years ago I bought a replacement for less than $200, from someplace on Ebay. It worked out fine. ETA: Looks like you can still find them for $200-220.

 

I just checked Rock Auto for giggles and they have one for $126 with core, and 5 day delay for programing. Even if it only lasts a couple years that's a pretty good price.

 

I agree. Good idea to check there! I assume you'll send them your VIN and they'll set it up. These things are highly tunable once you figure out the tables in Jet DST, so I can't see the allure of trying to spend real money on an aftermarket system unless you're doing something really radical. With the money you'd save by sticking with your OE vented Opti and this replacement PCM, you could do a lot of other cool things to your car.

 

When you say "charger" do you mean battery charger or a power supply? Battery chargers are not filtered and regulated for use as power supplies. The battery needs to be connected.

 

I think he just meant that he had a charger on the battery, which was still connected, to ensure that it didn't run out of juice in the middle of a reflash.

 

I posted one on ebay for a 96 on here for $100 two or three weeks ago. You do not have to change the vin but it will eat up a license I believe. If I recall correctly I changed mine in DST. I didnt check to see if it ate a license to do it. Probably did.

There is one electrolytic cap that should be changed on these things.. We are right at the point where they can begin to fail as seen on the bose system.

I agree with MM, the 24x is a waste of money on a vented opti.. its even a waste on a non vented unless you are doing extreme modifications to the lt1. This is my opinion after reading about the benefits. The DST software is pretty robust, or should I say what GM allowed to be changed is robust.

You know, it is possible, though no one has likely tried, to burn the flash while soldered in..Id be curious if it could be done. its possible one or two traces would need to be cut and then jumpered after the burn.. Would be an interesting project..I think you only end up destroying one side, the side that has the boot loader in it. The burn takes like 15 seconds and can retry a bunch of times I think. Since this can be done in place with a tech II I think its likely it would work. I believe youd only need to make 4 connections to the flash rom. read, write power, grnd.

For what youd pay for a 24x you could do your diff and cam and have a rocket ship.

EDIT: what is frustrating is its likely a single byte that needs to changed. I believe when the DST does a burn it puts it into a special mode to accept the write..If the DST doesnt complete it wont put that byte back. This is why if you read the instructions carefully on the DST it says to not shut anything off if it locks up and throws an error.. you can then try a recovery.. but if you do not do this the ECU cannot reboot. Most people panic and restart the DST software and or the DST device itself.. I did.

 

I just noticed you said you had your charger in boost mode. I dont think this is a good idea. Most boot modes are very noisy if you throw an oscilloscope on it. It usually bypasses some regulation circuitry and possibly some filter circuitry because what it comes with is engineered for very low current. The battery in theory should clean that up but I wouldnt trust it. As long as you can truly deliver like 5 amps in charge mode you should be fine. The way to test this is to turn the ignition on and put your charger and a multimeter on and watch the voltage for about 15 minutes. It should maintain 12.7v or more and it should not drop even a tenth of a volt ever. If it does your charger is not keeping up with the load from the ignition on and all of its components.

I wouldnt be surprised if boost mode was the cause of your doom.

 

Could be, but the boost mode on my charger only delivers extra power during crank, otherwise it's just maintaining. There's no way for me to know for sure but I watched the flash software simply **** the bed half way through the write. Nothing else happened. Laptop was still on, car didn't indicate any dip in power.

It's still my responsibility because I was using a new laptop with windows 10, and even though Jet claims this isn't an issue I 100% believe their software has not been properly updated. When i flash the new PCM, i'm going to use an old sony winxp laptop that's been wiped completely and a fresh SP3 xp installation. I initially avoided that since the battery on that laptop is crap

 

Yes, that is the common symptom. But yeah using win10 is a very bad idea for the reason you stated. But even if you take all the precautions this can happen. I proved it.
Hopefully, your rock auto ecu will perform for you. You are not going to be happy if it defecates on the bed right away

If you are going to be doing a ton of changes over time the only way to do it is socket the sucker.. but you have to be a little nutty to do it