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Below is a recounting of various car events I've attended along the years, from car club meets, autocrosses, track events, and enthusiast drives.

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2004/08/20 Smog vs Computers
π 2004-08-20 21:21 by Merlin in Cars, Ncars

Finally, my car passed smog this morning. I should be able to get a new registration now :)

That said, I have to share how painful it was (and it really shouldn't have been): to pass smog, I had to reprogram my engine computer with a laptop that had a serial port.
My original laptop died the day I was planning to upload the new maps. I ended up getting a replacement, but that didn't have onboard serial ports anymore (they're gone from most laptops now)
I tried 3 USB serial port adapters for my new laptop, and none worked (i.e. the windows app couldn't talk to the car computer). A PCMCIA/serial card was $150, so I didn't go that route, but turns out that with a port replicator, there is actually a way to get a serial port out of my laptop.
Full of hope, I plugged it in, and it still didn't work, even with a bona fide onboard serial port. WTF?
(apparently, I now think that it just doesn't work with Windows XP at all and the laptop won't run my Windows 2000 image. Lovely...)
While I was trying this, I bought an ancient laptop for $20 at the flea market last weekend, and I went through hell to try and get windows running on it (the first hard drive died, the second didn't get recognized at first, but worked eventually, and it took about 3H to get a PCMCIA network card to work on the thing, I just forgot how badly windows sucked back then (safe mode, deleting drivers, re-installing them multiple times until it pseudo randomly worked eventually)).
Anyway, that laptop eventually worked, and I was able to use it to load new maps in the car's ECU, tried smog a second time on tuesday, failed by a very little bit, got a new map for thursday, never made it to the smog shop since my transmission became non functionning, go it fixed yesterday, and finally made it to the smog shop again and passed this morning.
Yeah! :)

(Jason gets real credit for helping me out with all this, and providing me with the multiple smog maps to help me pass)
wideband tuned.bin:
RPM  %CO2  %O2  HC MAX/Ave/Meas  CO% Max/Ave/Meas  NO PPM Max/Ave/Meas
1853 14.4  0.9         93/21/61    0.57/0.06/0.03         720/150/1328 << fail
2086 14.4  0.6         59/13/36    0.55/0.05/0.00         774/136/1394 << fail
emissions2.bin:
RPM  %CO2  %O2  HC MAX/Ave/Meas  CO% Max/Ave/Meas  NO PPM Max/Ave/Meas
2962 14.7  0.5         93/21/63    0.57/0.06/0.13         720/150/660
2979 14.7  0.4         59/13/30    0.55/0.05/0.00         774/136/840  << fail
emissions3.bin:
RPM  %CO2  %O2  HC MAX/Ave/Meas  CO% Max/Ave/Meas  NO PPM Max/Ave/Meas
2970 14.7  0.4         93/21/23    0.57/0.06/0.01         720/150/480
2945 14.7  0.3         59/13/12    0.55/0.05/0.00         774/136/597  << pass

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