Via a quatech spp 100 pcmcia parallel port dohingky. Set i/o range to 0378-037F and it seems to work. Low voltage was a thought at first but it does appear to punch through to the chip. It's by no means a cheap interface.

I don't know the exact details, this is a third party tool after all, but if you look at the avrdude configuration file you'll see its full of magic timing constants.
There's a lot of bit banging done on the parallel port to talk to the Atmel chip. Normally a parallel port is easily accessed by the CPU with little overhead. I don't know the details of PCMCIA but if there an extra level of stuffing around to read or write the parallel port, that timing difference could be enough to throw the timing off.

Just try it a half dozen times and see if one completes successfully.

Thanks guys. Like I say this operation deserves its own sub-section to assist others through what I have found a veritable minefield! I'm looking forward to actually driving the bike and not farting about with the electronic gubbins for a while although a day without knowledge is a day wasted etc etc..

Your area must be warming up too Raz? Here's to happy days to come.

I'll keep you posted and keep a tally of the flash attempts until success (fingers crossed).
gavin

Good news. We're getting there.
I use hot glue to hold wires and tall components etc. Does anyone no how that will fare?
Edit: I wish I could proof read better.

The acetic acid component smells pretty acrid on use - I should have guessed. Ironically I bought a glue gun a couple of weeks ago after considering one for about 20 years - a mate swears by them - he guillotines mitres and makes fab picture frames. Hey ho. The optimiser board has suffered too - I think Ill treat myself to a new one. It's knackered from the ravages of silicone but also several modifications and soldering / de-soldering whilst making my natty instrument cluster. Some of the tracks have suffered and it looks - well crap and suspect it wont take much more.
Cliff - how much for a new board?
p.s. - on power up I get a top line of lcd blocks (rectangles) and the lower line is top half of rectangles only. There is a slight slow pulsing and button pushes appear to change but the display shows the same characterisation. Gi'es a clue?

Ok sorted the optimiser - dual probs.
1) Rerererererere - checked the wiring and then got your top line of black rectangles so
2) re re re re flashed the optimiser chip and bingo.
However there does seem to be different menu patterns - whats "nan*" and the map has 2 options. What's that all about?
Is there an update to the optimiser manual?

* I assume its nothing to do with Indian bread

I've not seen nan. I'm surprised the Optimiser code have the logic to display it. Can you send me a pic of it.

There are new menu items for backup and restore map.

Backup will store a copy on the Optimiser and restore will write the Optimiser copy back.

There is no fail-safe so it is currently possible to restore before a backup is taken. Also the engine should be not be running when these are done.