AnaLink

Table of Contents

• Installing AnaLink
  • Hardware Requirements
  • Vendors
  • Connecting Link to Pilot
  • Troubleshooting
• Menu options
• Collecting data
  • Capturing Maps
  • Instrument Panel
  • Notes
• Playing back data
  • Analyzing data
  • Viewing Maps
• Configuring collection, playback and analysis
  • Resetting to default values
  • Link ECU type 1.6/1.8 Turbo/NA
  • Vehicle constants
• Deleting Run Data
• Saving/Exporting Data
• Planned upgrades
  • Version History
• Purchasing AnaLink
  • Delivery Times
• The FAQ

• Flying Miata/Link ECU, 1.6 or 1.8, Turbo or N/A
• Serial Link interface (keypad also highly recommended)
• Palm Pilot or other animal running Palm OS2.0 or later (no se habla WinCE) - Handspring Visors are (as of November 2000) less than an ideal solution, mostly due to problems connecting the serial cable.
• 100K free RAM minimum in the Pilot (before installing AnaLink)
• Cable gender changer w/ Null Modem adaption, also a hotsync cable for the Pilot is highly recommended, see connecting your pilot.
• Spare set of AAA batteries

Palm Pilot battery life is generally pretty good, typically 40 "on" hours per set of AAAs. AnaLink uses the serial port which dramatically reduces this to just a few hours, comprable to a typical (new) notebook computer's battery life. If you must run the backlight, keep your spare batteries handy. I have two sets of rechargables, and have never had a freshly charged set go dead in one outing, over 2 hours of recording.

Vendors

• MiataLink ECU and SerialLink from The Dealer Alternative. Two thumbs up.
• Palm Pilot Professional and HotSync cable from buycomp.com. These guys have generally good prices and fast delivery, but you might want to watch the prices for a few days before buying, in 1998 I noticed the Pilot Professional fluctuating from $197 to $241, and the Palm III from $268 to $305, these numbers just continue to fall lower and lower.
• Gender changer from computergate.com. I bought CGCM09MM, and no, it doesn't look like the picture on their website, it's much smaller. If you need any other computer cables, get 'em at the same time to save on shipping costs - which are usually higher than the cost of the parts.
• NiMH AAA batteries from greenbattery.com. These guys were super dis-organized, if you buy from them, I recommend followup calls, lots of 'em. They did deliver, and the batteries and charger are good, but I think they might have lost my order entirely if I let them.

You can also download some sample data: AnaLink_RunData.PDB, AnaLink_MapData.PDB and install it the same way. This sample data is from my 1.6 MiataLink, the 1.8 has a slightly different data stream. See configuring about differences 1.6/1.8, and make sure to view the sample data in 1.6 mode.

While you're here, grab alc.exe. It's a DOS program that translates AnaLink's .PDB files to ASCII format .TXT files. There's also AnaLink_Translator.exe, the Win95 version. Saving Data describes a bit about how you can use these programs.

AnaLink is DemoWare - you can download and run it freely, but without a passcode, certain features will not work (they will pop up a "Demo Version" message instead). If you like what you see in the demo and want to purchase the full version, see the purchasing section.

Toby Weir-Jones pointed me at National Technology computer adaptors and cables. Finally, (in May 2000), a company that stocks EVERYTHING.

Gary Morrison points out that the Pilot Modem cable can be connected directly to the SerialLink box using the appropriate DB9-DB25 adaptor - this is probably the easiest to find, no soldering required solution.

Tom Lamano was kind enough to tell me the Radio Shack part number for a null-modem gender changer (sorry everyone, I lost the number), but if you're lucky, your local store will carry the part, the three in my neighborhood didn't :(

Cables from http://www.markspace.com/datacord.html may make the Handspring Visor useable - if I understand their nomenclature correctly, the DCH-M9 9 pin modem cable should be a direct hookup to the Serial Link box.

Note: I obtained a similar cable from ATL which is a replacement for a Visor Serial HotSync cradle - this cable works as advertised when hooked up to a PC serial port (powered port), but does NOT work with the SerialLink box. Too bad since that cable has a much nicer positive locking connection on the Visor, my Palm HotSync cables are getting very easy to pull off. From a nuts and bolts standpoint, it should be exceedingly easy to make a Visor to MiataLink cable, since they both speak low level RS232, they could be connected without using the level shifting chips found in the SerialLink box and Visor serial cables. If anybody starts a hobby-business of making these special purpose cables, please let me know.

There's also an extensive Palm device cable vendor at: pcables.com Purple Data Cables. They recommended a "PDCH-M9EPOW-6, which allows an external power source to be easily used." As of August 2001, I haven't tried this yet...

Otherwise, you're going to need to find some rare parts, or do a little soldering.

The SerialLink box as delivered (to me) from Link Electronics / the Dealer Alternative, is wired to be connected to a PC with a straight modem cable. Funny thing is, I don't think I've ever seen an external modem with a 9 pin connector, and I surely haven't seen any notebooks lately with 25 pin serial ports, and hunting high and low, I can't find any straight modem cables that are 9-9, 9-25 or 25-25 yes, but no 9-9. Oh well, enough bitching, let's solve the problem.

What the PalmPilot would really like would be for the SerialLink to come with a 9 pin male instead of 9 pin female connector, and for pins 2 and 3 to be reversed. You can do this a few ways, with a 9-9 M-M null modem/gender changer (which I also could not find on the open market), or buy a 9-9 M-M gender changer that you can open up and make into a null modem adapter by reversing lines 2 and 3, I believe this is what Keith Tanner did. Many thanks to Keith for turning me on to the idea of buying a PalmPilot to log my MiataLink data. Or, you can do what I did, buy a compact 9-9 M-M gender changer, then open up the Serial Link box, cut the traces to pins 2 and 3, then solder on jumper wires to reverse the connection. I found that solid core telephone wire (about 22 gauge) was fairly easy to work with to make the jumper. The Cadillac solution would be to remove the DB9F in the SerialLink and replace it with a DB9M (and make the cut & jumper cross), but I don't have the skills for that trick, and my solution is almost as compact.

Troubleshooting

• Not having the proper ECU type selected - the Edit Text /E screen has three options, which used to be intuitive and simple, but due to multiple revisions of the Link software, no longer are. If you don't have a good guess as to which type of data stream your ECU produces, just try all three choices one after the other until you get the graphs drawing nicely on the View Capture /C screen.
• On the View Capture /C screen, you must check the Connect box to get any data from the Link ECU. Unchecking Connect can be useful to freeze a display at a desired spot, and it also turns of the Palm serial port, significantly extending battery life.
• A couple of people have had spotty serial connections to the Pilot (a bad cable) - this can be diagnosed by attempting to capture the raw data with a terminal program like Keith used to in the old days.
• Hackmaster hacks, and any other programs which stay resident and run concurrently with AnaLink may cause problems - they eat CPU cycles, cause delays, and generally muck things up. Launchers, replacement calculators, and other software that is not running concurrently with AnaLink should not present any problems.
• No users have reported this problem to me, but I occasionally accidentally press Find while recording - if you dismiss the Find dialog quickly enough, everything is cool, but usually it results in a BIG problem (like, keep the paperclip handy cause you'll need to reset the Palm....) I can imagine similar problems if a datebook or other alarm pops up during a recording session.

Mike Inman
1160 NE 91 Terrace
Miami Shores, FL 33138
USA

In fact, I appreciate check or money orders so much, I'm willing to discount the price to $55 for payment direct to me. (Palm Gear earned this undercutting by holding my September 7th purchase monies until January 26th!)

If getting US dollars to me in the mail is a hardship for you, you used to be able to register the software online at PalmGear.com ; However, recent (May 2003) changes in PalmGear.com policy leads me to accept checks direct to me only for AnaLink registration. If this is a problem, e-mail me and we'll work something out.

The "Demo Version" screen that comes up when you check Store in View Capture includes a name and a four letter code in parenthesis like: Mike Inman (AAAA) - you need to tell me exactly how that name is spelled, and what the four letter code is so I can generate your code.

Even with this mild copy protection, I recognize that a profficient PalmPiloteer might "borrow" a code from a friend. I'm not daring anyone to do this, AnaLink is still on the honor system, and I believe the software cost is more than fair, for perspective, think of how many copies I'll have to sell to pay for my Flying Miata conversion - I don't have any such goal, but you can see that I'm not going to retire on selling this software.

Delivery Times

This manual is obviously a work in progress, if you have any questions or suggestions, please send them to: topcat@mangocats.com.