[ST185 connectivity issue and burnt laptop]

11 hours ago, Adamw said:

I dont see any way the ecu could damage the laptop.  The USB circuit is completely opto isolated from the ecu - ie there is no electrical connection between the ecu and laptop..  

The only way I have seen a laptop damaged in the past was when a USB cable was mistakenly plugged into a powered CAN port, but the ST185 ecu doesnt have the powered CAN so that is not a possibility.  

Hi Adam, yes... after speaking with my PC seller it seems that two bad things just happened at the same time...
So my motherboard death seems it's not connected to ecu connectivity issues on this particular engine/setup
 

 

6 hours ago, Brad Foreman said:

Could the disconnection  issue be due to electrical noise ? We have had a similar issue at high loads on the dyno with non resisted spark plugs (and the coils are kind of close to the ecu) it would disconnect the laptop from pclink.  But again it was only at high load it would do that . Went back to resistor plugs and issue went away

Disconnection issue is electrical noise for sure, even though I already have resistor plugs in that car.
Anyway, further separating and isolating usb cable from the rest of the wiring loom helped a lot
 

[ST185 connectivity issue and burnt laptop]

Hello,
yesterday was the dyno day of a customer's restored Celica ST185 using the plug & play G4+.
It was almost a week that I was connecting it to my Asus Zenbook to get a proper ecu setup and base map with only few connections issues at the start.
As I tried to connect the ecu on the dyno with engine at idle, PC Link wasn't able to, so I had to close and restart the sw.
When the ecu was finally connected to PC Link, anytime I revved the engine a bit, PC Link showed again and again a message "Unable to connect to the ECU. Please check that the ECU is properly connected, the power is turned on and the correct COM port has been selected".
So i checked the connection cable, changed USB port on the PC, also tried to restart my PC, checked Options/Connections, but when I tried to connect again and rev the engine, the same issue happened.... till my Laptop switched off and wasn't able to switch it on anymore.
I connected my Battery Recharger to my ASUS laptop, but it even didn't light the recharging led.
I also tried a 2nd laptop, but as I got the same connection issues, I preferred not to burn even this second one.
In the afternoon I got at my PC shop, and the reason was that the mother board was fried and needed to be changed with a new one.
About the car, it is newly and fully rebuilt with 100% stock parts and no upgrades, so everything is oem.
Thanks for any hint or advice
Wolf