Counterfeit MarkD (E.A.T.) chips

[e30s52]

People like Joaquin should get cancer. enough said. sorry if i offended anyone, unless you're joaquin.

that is so fucked up.

[SpecM]

that is so fucked up.

-seriously, that is one step too far.

[z31maniac]

This sucks MarkD, I was planning on having you build a chip for me in the near future!

[Farbin Kaiber]

This thread has bad news written all over it.

[SamE30e]

People like Joaquin should get cancer. enough said. sorry if i offended anyone, unless you're joaquin.

Yea buddy, definetly a little too far on that one. I wouldn't be surprised if you get the banned soon.

R3v is mean, but that's just horrible.

[SamE30e]

This thread has bad news written all over it.

This is true...

[george graves]

R3v is mean, but ....

What are you talking about? - R3v farts rainbows...we're not mean.

[SamE30e]

What are you talking about? - R3v farts rainbows...we're not mean.

Oh my apologies. R3v is the internet re-incarnation of Mother Goose.

[MarkD]

This sucks MarkD, I was planning on having you build a chip for me in the near future!

I will still be doing some custom work, and selling the regular chips, but won't be spending hours on new chips with small markets.

But right now I have to concentrate on my contract work which I had to take, as chip sales are dropping to such low levels that I'd make more money flipping burgers. (Really)

[MarkD]

Hmm. Would it be possible/feasible to add a line of code somewhere that would uniquely identify the chip (basically a hidden serial number) and then use that to identify the origin of the copied chips with a cross reference of who bought what?

Then it would just be a matter of recouping full retail price of your software times how many copies sold from that "customer".

Yes I can do that, but the chips have already been sold by that time. I also considered using hard-to-duplicate labels about 5 years ago, but then the printer I wanted to buy for that purpose was discontinued. I was planning to use an ALPS dye sublimation printer which can print with metallic inks.

The best plan is to do what TMS does, sell a chip that can not be read by a cheap programmer. But the cost of each chip will go up by around $50 unless I sell a few hundreds per year, which I don't.
And there would be about $3500 in NRE (non-recurring engineering) just to develop the encryption board and make a small run of them.

And recouping costs from a cloner may sound simple, but it would cost quite a bit to actually do it.


In the case of nitro325is, someone called me asking questions about the used chip he had for sale, and I knew something was odd as this was less than 4 weeks after the chip was sold to him. Then almost 3 weeks later, someone else calls saying they bought the same chip but it runs like crap.

MarkD

[Justin B]

That's just shitty Mark. I'm glad to know that I bought one straight from you fair and square.

[Funkmasta]

The best plan is to do what TMS does, sell a chip that can not be read by a cheap programmer. But the cost of each chip will go up by around $50 unless I sell a few hundreds per year, which I don't.
And there would be about $3500 in NRE (non-recurring engineering) just to develop the encryption board and make a small run of them.

MarkD

Is that like Dinan's piggy-back chip setup that I pulled out of a 413?

[MarkD]

Is that like Dinan's piggy-back chip setup that I pulled out of a 413?

I've never seen that setup. But I think they use a special board on some of the EWS-II DME's.
Was it a silver label 413? That is where I'd expect to see it.

[ejnight]

I feel your pain. I have to deal with piracy at my work and wholesale distributors that whore out are products on to flee-bay at dealer cost. I get the calls from the dealers asking how they are supposed to compete. Good luck.

[Funkmasta]

I've never seen that setup. But I think they use a special board on some of the EWS-II DME's.
Was it a silver label 413? That is where I'd expect to see it.

Yeah, it was a silver 413... I didn't know if it was their answer to EWS bypass, or if it was coding protection. I have bought and used JC chips for 413s years ago, and I don't recall a separate piggyback plate