T Bone

I had a good chat with the local BMW technician who focused on M's.

Apparently E60's (and E90's) from March 2007 production on use a new connector for software programming called PT-Can. Where as the older E60's use something called a D-Can.

The PT-Can is apparently the same physical connector as the D-Can but wired differently. The Dinan programmer is only for D-Can type of E60s. Dinan is apparently working on this.

Can anyone verify this? Has anyone tried to take the Dinan software with a March 2007 or newer M5? Did it take the Software?


This issues DOES NOT affect the E63 or the M6's....even the newer ones are still using D-Can.

__________________
"Aerodynamics are for people who cannot build engines"...... Enzo Ferrari

Dylan Thomas

T Bone - The following is only speculation, but I don't understand how changing a connector would affect installation of the Dinan software.

What your BMW tech said implies installation via a separate connection. My S.A. told me they download Dinan's software and whenever new BMW software is installed, the Dinan software is simply piggybacked on top using the same connection.

__________________

Buy the market. Hold for the long term. Keep costs low. Don’t chase fads. Cough up as little as possible to keep Wall Street’s army of little helpers in Hermes and Heineken.

-- John Bogle

When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with the money ends up with the experience and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.

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kees

In another thread I've read that Dinan can't upgrade on V25 or beyond. To install software they have to downgrade the car to V24.

Dylan Thomas

My car is in the shop now, round 2 for nagging problems. Had version 26.4 installed last week, my S.A. told me the Dinan software will install on that version with no problems.

One other thought, how does BMW's software vary around the globe? Launch Control and top speed limiter aside, are the versions installed in European models the same as the Middle East or the U.S.?

__________________

Buy the market. Hold for the long term. Keep costs low. Don’t chase fads. Cough up as little as possible to keep Wall Street’s army of little helpers in Hermes and Heineken.

-- John Bogle

When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with the money ends up with the experience and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.

-- Warren Buffett

T Bone

Hey Dylan, when was your car produced?

My guy is saying that they have a completely set of different connectors for the PT-Can than the D-Can. If they are wired up differently but sharing the same physical connector, you wouldn't be able to program it.

BUT if your SA is plugging in the Dinan programmer further upstream, they might be able to use the factory PT-Cans. I will speak to my SA next week to see if this is possible since my neighbor wants the SW too.

__________________
"Aerodynamics are for people who cannot build engines"...... Enzo Ferrari

Dylan Thomas

My M was built 6/06, before the 3/07 date you previously mention.

I don't understand why different connectors would make any difference, they are simply gateways to the internal components. The only scenario I can think of is Dinan's installation program is not written to match the PT-Can's internal wiring and doesn't direct the new values to the specific EPROM memory registers where the target data is stored. If so, the Dinan software will need to be re-written to poke the changes to the proper locations and also means either BMW's software comes in more than one version for different build dates or the software contains a subroutine that checks the attached system's build date and proceeds accordingly.

See if you can find out more.

__________________

Buy the market. Hold for the long term. Keep costs low. Don’t chase fads. Cough up as little as possible to keep Wall Street’s army of little helpers in Hermes and Heineken.

-- John Bogle

When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with the money ends up with the experience and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.

-- Warren Buffett

T Bone

See the pic of the Dinan programmer.... If it is physically wired one way, it will not be able to program the ECU. They might as well be different physical connectors.

I can see BMW reusing physical connectors as they would have had significant R&D money spent on the development.


EDIT: See http://www.obdii.com/connector.html for the different OBD2 protocols....the theory is BMW switched protocol on the M5 from 03 / 06 on from one OBD2 protocol to another protocol.

Attached Thumbnails

     

__________________
"Aerodynamics are for people who cannot build engines"...... Enzo Ferrari

T Bone

See the various M5 ECUs

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...62&hg=12&fg=10

The current one is part # 12147839212

The only ECU for the M6 is

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...62&hg=12&fg=10

The part number is # 12147839212


Looks like the M5 went through 4 revisions of the ECU before settling on using the same one as the M6.

__________________
"Aerodynamics are for people who cannot build engines"...... Enzo Ferrari

Wayward

It would seem that a multi-billion dollar corporation is still sorting out their product (nothing new, I know).

While I don't believe this falls into the "unforgivable" category (hey, they pretty much know that the majority of past purchasers will ante up again), I do lament something here, but admittedly, it's hard to quantify.

Does anyone think that customers are being taken advantage of for real-world QA? Reasonably speaking, of course.

Any given mfgr will typically justify these views in terms of, per their R&D/marketing costs -- lower purchase prices for their "almost but not quite there" products. Nevertheless, it seems (again, nothing new here) that we (that'd be us) are quite willing to do partake, based on prior said mfgr's previous successfully marketed products.

That said, perhaps this entire post is a poster-boy for "being a bit too rational". Thoughts?

Jster

This type of part rev'ing is pretty common in most industries-- cost, supplier change, tweak for some reason, etc. and I don't mind it happening. Where I do mind it happening is when it is done for a quality reason and it may affect the middle to back end of the warranty curve as well as the out of warranty product failure modes. Since BMW's practice tends to be "you have to find it for us to fix it" (which, to be fair, more an more companies are moving towards) and pro-actively deal with failures only when they become massive (Vanos, SAS, shocks, etc.) or safety related I tend to continue believing it may not make sense (read "potentially too expensive") to hold the car past warranty.