I've always been rather succesful with recovering ECU's for people, so it's unusual to be asking for advice, but here goes!
I've got a tprotected EDC17C46 unit here, that's apparently dead. Indeed in the car that's how it behaves, we get the fans on, relays click wildly, no boot no management light, no communication and of course, no engine start.
With the ecu on bench, with bootloader (genuine Kess), the processor is able to communicate with tool, and we are able to read and verify the contents of the microprocessor, and also perform a write. I've been given a backup file so we have tried rewriting the lot to no avail, which to be honest from the relays clicking I wasn't expecting to be effective anyway - it's always an ominous sign!
My gut feeling is that the boot pins, which according to the respective datasheet double as the hardware config pins have been shorted whilst the ecu has been soldered - or something along those lines and I think the processor is internally damaged.
I've done the usual checks regardless, check for pcb damage, contunuity of pins, i've even resoldered the processor in case there was anything the eye couldn't see, but to no avail.
So, bearing in mind the chip seems to contain some OTP areas (well, as good as OTP anyway) I'm looking at my options - I can source another ecu but i'm prepared to invest somewhat as few seem to work with these yet (from a recovery point of view anyway), so this is a fantastic opportunity to get down to the nitty gritty with these types.
I'm wondering if anyone has opinions of a good strategy to save this ecu - I can get a replacement but i want this alive even if it then spends the rest of its days on the bench in a development role -my next plan of attack really is to replace the microcontroller as a whole, i'm just concerned that the controller will have a serial code onboard which will prevent all the (usual) approaches to cloning. It just seems too easy (if you consider soldering a near-100 pin chip easy :lol: )
I never scrap an ECU so...Any thoughts?