Good choice. Give Chris at Alientech USA a call and tell him what you want to do. He can give you several options and can probably save you some money.

 

A better programmer is certainly a smart investment, especially if you're doing this frequently. The FG Tech device is ok, but the Alientech gear is the gold standard.

One final though in troubleshooting might be to check your current supply going to the ECU. A lot of people are forced to use a bench top PS because the current requirements often times outpace the included power supply's ability.

 

I figured I will need this once I kick my N18 swap project. I was able to marry other ECUs (Mini) but not this one. I'm afraid to use a powerful external power supply and damage the unit! what would you say a healthy amperage should be?

 

Finally my Ktag arrived last night. And as might've guessed, i couldn't just go to sleep without getting to the bottom of this.

So.....ktag was able to read the eeprom. This early edition of ECU seemed to have a separate chip for the eeprom and the tricore was for the maps. Later on they put everything in the tricore chip.

Now that i got the eeprom copied from another ECU, tomorrow will test if it actually works. Note this ECU has 8kb eeprom where the one i wanted to copy was 64kb. Fingures crossed.
btw, the ktag i got is v2.10. I might return it and get the v2.23. This one doesnt show connection diagrams!

 

Does any one know which line has the ISN number in the 2011+ ECUs eeprom?

 

Never mind, I figured it out.