I have an addiction..

[matt]

You could do it now - there's already one in an E36ti! We need more. :)

Yeah, IDA can't handle the decompression. There must be some information on how it was compressed in the boot sector (they use some sort of table algorithm to compress it), as the CPU has to be able to do it somehow. That's a little over my head at the moment. It makes getting around the RSA much more difficult, as you can't just patch the boot code like on the uncompressed CPUs.

I'm about to start an LS3 swap into my e46 wagon, maybe that'll be next.

Can you send me a bin or point out one that uses compression? :devil:

[Julien]

Awesome work Chris, I love my "Nando" N52 Tune

[nando]

You could do it now - there's already one in an E36ti! We need more. :)

Yeah, IDA can't handle the decompression. There must be some information on how it was compressed in the boot sector (they use some sort of table algorithm to compress it), as the CPU has to be able to do it somehow. That's a little over my head at the moment. It makes getting around the RSA much more difficult, as you can't just patch the boot code like on the uncompressed CPUs.

[matt]

Wow. It's kind of funny that I haven't been on a BMW forum in like 5 years and then 2/3 threads I reply to last night are yours. Small world.

Like I said on the other forum, that's really incredible work that you guys are doing. An open, collaborative ecosystem was our dream back in the day. I'm really envious.

I have done a lot of PPC reverse engineering and I have never seen compressed code. IDA can't handle it, right? Might be worth asking them to add support. I actually helped an old coworker with the RSA authentication routine for a transmission controller not too long ago and it kinda made me want to jump back into some ECUs. Now that there's a decompiler for PPC, it's probably a lot more fun.

How long until I can build an e36 and put an N52 in it? ;D

[Matt-B]

clickbait.

expected meth addiction or another e30.


lame

[nando]

Hey, me too. Except I moved on from DMEs and I'm working on all sorts of cool stuff now.

Email me if you ever want to talk shop, I still dabble in ECU RE.

well, if you know anything about dealing with code compression on the MPC5xx CPU.. haha. Transmission tunes are getting to be a popular thing, with like 99.9% of all BMWs now being automatics (ugh). But on cars that use 1024 bit RSA signatures, it makes modifying them quite difficult.

We've built tools to do all sorts of fun stuff - autogenerated 0da files for WinKFP, and on DMEs with 512bit RSA, I can add a valid signature it as well. We can do the M03 checksums as well (on some DMEs, if you change some of the switches/constants it has *another* checksum that will fail, and it's not just a standard CRC).

Oh, I bricked my MSV80 while testing the earlier versions of my 0da tool, but we figured out how to recover that too. So maybe I'll make some progress on the EWS delete. :)

[parkerbink]

Nice!

[matt]

Hey, me too. Except I moved on from DMEs and I'm working on all sorts of cool stuff now.

Email me if you ever want to talk shop, I still dabble in ECU RE.

[Dagamus(NM)]

Good stuff Nando. Following.

[HCMW Adam]

It is really cool what you are doing with these computers. I confess I do not know anything about the computers. The mechanical aspects of a swap are simple to me. Making it run is another matter.

N52 is my interest now.

Thoughts on using an older dme and ignoring the valvetronic. Basically consider it a lighter m54?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nando]

Hah!

So I ended up bricking my MSV80 - fat finger typo in the hex code, which WinKFP happily flashed. Changed a byte that counts the number of checksum segments from 01 to 40. Oops.

Building files and running checksums manually is slow and error prone, so I've been building custom tools to do that. Putting the finishing touches on it, then i can go back to testing. Should eliminate stupid crap like DME bricks..

Picked up another MSV80 meanwhile, unfortunately it was DOA. Ugh.

Also started on a MAF delete tune for N52s and continuing to tweak the N52 swapped E36 ti. In my "spare" time...

[eastcoastcory]

Damn this is intense 😏

[nando]

BTW, I should be testing EWS deletes for MSV80 by the end of the week - MSD80 is basically the same, so that means... N54 swaps are a realistic possibility (without swapping the entire car's electronics over, like I'm sure that M3 had to).

The rest (other than getting it to start) is getting it all setup to run outside the original chassis. It would basically just take one person who doesn't mind being on the bleeding edge to work with me, deleting spurious error codes and working out bugs until it runs like it was the stock motor. I'm like 97% of the way there with the N52 running on MSV70, and it's all really very similar.

[nando]

Why would it be strange? S54, S62, and M54 are all DBW and all have been done before. Its not like you can tell (other than the engines making way more power, while also being lighter and more efficient).

[E30 Wagen]

The electronics aren't an issue at all though. MS43 has had a free EWS delete for at least a year. I developed an MS45 EWS delete last year. It's really not any harder than an M52 swap - and you get a better, lighter engine, a decade newer, and probably lower miles. I can also do the N52, but no E30s have done that one yet (the oil pan remains an issue).

I so want to see a N52 in an e30. Personally I think it would be weird using a drive-by-wire throttle in an old e30, but the power/weight would be awesome. I can see the N52 becoming a popular swap for tired e46s, that is if the prices get low enough for college kids to afford swapping mom's hand-me-down automatic 325i.