The fact that you'd be willing to take apart something you own that works perfectly fine, just to help some random guy on the other side of the planet says a lot about you. The world could use more people like you good sir.
Thanks👍. He seemed to be in a bit of a pickle and it wasn't such a big job and he sent me a programmer. He also offered to pay me, but I said it was fine. I also volunteer at our local repair cafe, which we help people in the community repair their broken items free of charge (unless parts are needed and then it's up to them to pay for the parts).
I'll let you in on a dirty little secret: People who fix stuff usually get a little bit excited when something breaks, or when somebody comes to them with a problem like this, and they're only too happy to have an excuse to take something apart to figure out how it works. At least that's how it is with me anyway. Helping somebody is just a bonus.. A little cherry on top! 🤣
@@JoeBob79569 Helping somebody is just a bonus, sadly though so many people consider the efforts worthless. As a result I stopped helping out, it was never for the money (I never got paid!), but I can't abide how ungrateful people can be. On saying that I do recall how grateful a local farmer was when I repaired his electric fences - I was able to do it for a few quid (popped mosfets usually) saved him hundreds and a lot of time too!
@@JoeBob79569 Oh, I get it. I'm the same way. I enjoy doing things like this and I enjoy helping people out of a jam. Sadly I find there are less and less people like this so when I stumble across one I like to let them know they've been noticed. 😁
@@JoeBob79569 This is so true, it's a poorly kept secret among my friends and acquaintances that if someone comes to me with something broken, if it's a thing I've never tried to repair I'll do the job for free (not parts mind you) as it's fun and I got to learn on more random stuff. Most of the time I end up getting some compensation anyway but helping people and sating my curiosity is always the best part.
In a few years from now, some farmer will do a Hail Mary last ditch search for this exact issue and be absolutely amazed that it's been documented and resolved. Well done on what is an actual worldwide collaboration!
Thanks 👍yes hopefully it might be of some use to someone in the future. I think the eeprom is written to every 6 minute to update the .1 of an hour. So it could easily get corrupted.
Glad your dash was working properly after removal, there's always some risk involved and the fact you did this to help someone the other side of the world is awesome, nice one mate!😀
The conversion is simply Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) to decimal! (not some secret code to hide the true value). If you said this, I missed it. The addition of 6 when the value of a 4 bit nibble gets to 9 forces the number into the next nibble. It brought back memories from college in the late 80's playing with 8085 microprocessors and 74 series chips to drive 7 segment displays from BCD outputs from a microprocessor. PS recently found your channel and think it is brilliant! I find the real-world PCB rework very good to learn from as it shows ongoing real issues that will improve my skill now I am retired and picking up a new hobby.
Really enjoy your channel, the philosophy of repair rather than replace is almost gone in our time. Being willing to do what you did for Alex is really a sign of your quality. Keep up the good work!
would be great to upload this dump to the internet archive. as with any dump. just to preserve. manufacturers become more and more unwilling to help nowadays.
"I don't think you'd probably find too many farmers willing to take the dashboard out of the tractor & desolder chips & read them with eeprom programmers or whatever but I'll have a go. Try to help the guy out" I watched this video, mouth aghast, thinking this is absolutely the coolest thing. And about what a good person you are :') I'm so flipping impressed. I'm from Australia aswell. Learning about micro electronics repair this past year. You English have the best repair channels on TH-cam. :)
I have a Kubota that is about 5 years younger - it's still 100% electro-mechanical. No semiconductors to be found there, for which I am eternally grateful!
I've got a little Kubota RTV900 tipper truck. That doesn't have any semiconductors either.. Although the alternator just died, so I'm waiting for a new one to arrive (another job to do lol).
Thanks 👍Yes, but a lot of the stuff I post is to help people who have problems with items or helping them to repair stuff. I even volunteer at our local repair cafe to help people in the community repair their broken items 🙂
Legendary problem-solving and troubleshooting skills coupled with an insatiable curiosity for knowing how things work and on top of that incredible practicality and common sense. Inspiring. I want to thank you: I was in a challenging (for me) troubleshooting situation with a Nortek VRF (heat pump) system that multiple contractors had walked away from. I channeled your patience, calm, and reasoning and was able to solve the problem. Thank you! Most guys in my shoes would have said there's nothing that can be done and ran off.
Enjoying your channel and this video. Finally understood that you were saying "dashboard" I think. Your accent (to my ears) was causing me issues - thank goodness for closed captioning😘
Great work, I've done similar hex decoding and coding in desired values with Kenwood radios. Your desoldering of the IC and putting it back was very nice.
That was a very nice thing to do. Kudos to you for helping a stranger. Initially, I thought he just wanted the numbers off of it like his had burned the numbers off and couldn’t be read. I didn’t realize that he needed the stored data, and you would have to remove the chip from the board. Good on ya
Thanks yes it's something I've not done in ages. I think the last time was about 7 years ago when a friend had a landrover discovery 2 and needed the immobiliser disabled 👍
Not only fix a tractor the other side of the world but go deeper into the milage etc. Sometimes I think you have too much time on your hands 🙂 I often wish I knew more about electronics and stuff but then think I was just born too late. Did manage to get some computer qualifications and used to build my own PC's though. It is SO good we are all not the same, what a boring World it would be, keep on keeping on, not only entertaining but educational, already looking forward to what you will find to fix next.
Save yourself the time and trouble (and risk) to remove a chip from the board, use some DIP test clips. Most of the time you can read/write EEPROMs in-circuit. Test clips are available for SOIC as well.
Thanks for that. I've got some SOIC test clips, but I've had limited success when trying to read eeproms in circuit. I tried with a landrover ECU a while back and it wouldn't read. Was just easier to remove the chip.
Considering the most sophisticated tools my Dad needed for our tractor growing up were a sledge hammer, pocket knife, "Bob" the screw driver (a big old beater flat head) baling wire and if feeling fancy, electrical tape lol, tractors with computers in them are hard for me to really wrap my head around...
This one is pretty basic, I think it's only the dashboard that's computerised. I dont think the engine has any electronic controls. The newer ones are way more complicated and pretty much all controlled by computers including the engine like a modern day car.
A welder helps if you manage to let the block freeze. I live in Austria, home of the legendary Steyr 80 series tractors, one-cylinder Diesel pigs from the 50s. Most of them have had the block welded at least once, some twice. Some of the T80s were sold without any electrics whatsoever, the posh ones got two headlights, either a combined rear/brake/number plate light or two rear/brake lights and a number plate light, a glow plug, a generator with regulator and a starter. Oh and of course a horn.
seems like a pretty easy way to spoof the hours on these tracktors if you know what you are doing. i miss analog wheels where you could just roll it back by hand :D
Thanks 👍if you liked this then you might like the solar inverter I repaired and then had to figure out how the service password was calculated as the company wouldn't help me, or the ultrasound scanner where I unlocked a ton of hidden features and made it run doom 🙂
You’re such a nice person! You went through much hassle to help someone out. I wonder if there’s a repository for such data that could help someone in the future out as well?
Thanks 👍Someone suggested uploading it to internet archive. I guess you could even just pause the video and type in the bytes as there's probably only around 48 bytes or so.
Very nice of you, noone I know will dare to do this. You should have put a IC socket on the chip? rather than soldering it back.. heat damage to PCB risk etc
Thanks, agree I probably should have put a socket in. I didn't think I had any, but found some a week or two ago (used them when looking at the caravan x70 PSU)
Excellent job, much respect. You are a true gentleman and a scholar. You should have checked every bulb in that dash while you had it apart, cos as sure as bears sh1t in the woods, one or more of the bubs will blow now you've had it apart. It's Murphy's law.
@@BuyitFixit you could make some LED lights yourself, a LED and resistor would do the job. You can get premade ones but the cheap crappy ones won't last pissing time
Wow what a great human being the both of you are! Interesting segment about the hours too, I wonder where their magic value comes from. Theres got to be more to that number.
Thanks 👍I'm not too sure on the number. I was chatting to a friend of mine and I said it could be "the devils tractor" Case 666... and it is red after all 😂😂😂😂
Wow just love your work thanks for your educational electronic lessons Maybe one day could you show all the tools with soldering etc the same type lesson as you teach us I’m at the Capacitors diode resistors all that sort of stuff please Cheers and thanks again From Australia watching 😊
Thanks John👍if you like this sort of stuff check out the video I did on the solar inverter called 'no password no problem ' or the medical ultrasound I looked at and unlocked a ton of extra features, or the RGB laser I repaired 👍
@@BuyitFixit thanks for the tips will investigate. I learn that way, been around software and firmware engineering for about 20 years. They do keep things close to their chests I found. Or no time to explain to a non programmer☹️
Very good, your reputation is obviously spreading furrow and wide. Surprised there was no JTAG connector, but each to their own. You were, of course, lucky that the text wasn't inverted.
Thanks 👍I guess it's just the way I am. I always try to help people when I can.. I am also a volunteer at our local repair cafe which is once a month, where we help people in the local community, by trying to fix their broken items free of charge. (unless they need parts which they would either have to obtain or pay for).
how you ever learned about HEX code is beyond me. That is something that almost everyone has no idea about. When I was taking programing in College, we had to write programs in the different types of bite level codes so we could understand how they work. Not an easy class to take either. Now, if you were teaching that class at the time, it would have made more sense to me, and I would have caught on faster. Awesome video! I am sure years from now there will be someone that finds this video and will learn how to program the proper way.
When I was a kid and got my first computer (ZX Spectrum) I remember messing around with hex then, and even on the commodore 64). I still remember Jet Set Willy when it first came out and everyone wanted a copy of it, but it had some pesky piece of paper with all of these codes you had to enter before it allowed you to play the game. I started searching through all the program and found all the 195 bytes which were the jump instruction that caused the cpu to jump to that location. I then tried calling the locations one by one to see what they did. Turned out location 34499 was the part to enter the code, so I did POKE 34499,201 (201 was the code for return) so when the game started it now jumped to the key code part and immediately returned without displaying it or asking for it to be entered and started the game. I think I was around 15 at the time 😂
lol, right out of the gate you were a genius! My first computer was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. If you wanted to play a game you had to know basic dos to program it, then you could save your game to a cassette. After I learned basic dos they came out with the extended vision of the trs-80. I never really messed with the hex or binary code though. Once I got into College I learned how to program in C, and from there just about all the other languages, but I really didn't like it too much, so I changed to Computer Forensics and learned how to hack, or should I say ethical hacking. lol I think that's awesome you would still remember how do work with HEX code. Not a lot of people understand it, but you would make an awesome instructor on it though.
Have a look at the medical ultrasound scanner video I did or the 'no password no problem' on the aurora solar inverter (this video was after I fixed the thing and the company said its obsolete buy a new one and wouldn't give a service password) I think you'll like them. First computer I learned to program on was a Nascom2 that a friend built from a kit and you had to load the basic interpreter from tape 😂👍
Fantastic Mick I learnt alot about programming, I have done tv EPROMs and just wondered how it works and what does what, next time I will have a play about, excellent result and glad Alex got his tractor working you’re the boss 😊
Enjoyed this one Mick, very interesting. I have a chip that needs re-programming, i bought all the gear to do it but failed miserably. I will need to stay at yours for a week so you can show me how to program it. 😁
Forgive the very late comments...I'm working my way through all the vids ;) A while back I was using the engine & ECU etc out of an Alfa 166 for a project. The donor car I bought for the bits came with 2 keys, but only one of them talked to the inbuilt immobiliser within the ECU, which was a bit of an potential issue as I didn't want to rely on just one key. By chance, a kind soul on a forum I frequent had just solved this very issue by decoding the EEPROM in the unit that talked to the RFID blobs in the keys. Anyhoo...long story short, and getting to the point eventually....I was able to read the EEPROM in-situ with no problems and wondered if you'd ever tried that yourself? In my case, all we wanted to know was what code was stored for one of the active keys so we could duplicate it in a new RFID blob, rather than modifying the contents of the EEPROM, so no write back was needed.
@@chrissavage5966 No problem and thanks for checking out some of my other work 👍I've not had much success reading eeproms in situ. I tried a while back with a landrover ECU when a friend was in a similar situation to yourself and wanted the immobiliser disabled. I tried a few times bit kept getting read errors. The problem is that sometimes the CPU of a device interferes with signals, so the you have to have the device in reset constantly, also powering the eeprom can be an issue as you are effectively powering everything else connected to it.
@@BuyitFixit I confess I expected those sort of issues when it was suggested I could read the one I did in-situ, but it worked fine, much to my surprise. I take no credit for it though!
Guaranteed the magic value is there to stop cursory hex analysis from finding and altering the tractor hours, much like I assume the same is done for digital odometers.
For odometers in cars where storing in EEPROM would happen more often than the maximum numbers of write they use a simple wear leveling methode which only works for ascending numbers: There is a row of numbers stored, say 4 times. The highest one is the one being displayed and the lowest number is the one to be overwritten next. So that is a 1:4 wear leveling. Works perfect, because I did this with a PIC16F874 back in 2001. The products (about 2000 were sold until 2016) still come in for service and no EEPROM has ever failed until now.
Interesting solution! Thank you for commenting 👍I did have another dump from a different tractor that someone sent me to look at and it has the value duplicated 3 times but it's all the same value. This had 2503 hours. A friend of mine worked this out after I sent it to him, I had company over so didn't have a chance to look at it myself. 00000000h: AA FF 00 02 4A A4 93 83 00 02 4A A4 93 83 00 02 ; ªÿ..J¤“ƒ..J¤“ƒ.. 00000010h: 4A A4 93 83 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 42 00 8F 14 ; J¤“ƒ........B.. 00 02 4A A4 = 150180 mins 00 02 4A A4 93 83 the last byte 83 is the sum of the previous. We aren't sure on the 93 byte though.
@@BuyitFixit Yeah that is odd. With the checksum being explicitly for the counter only, one would guess that the 93 must be related to that counter value somehow. But I have no idea what it could be. Concerning wear leveling: After coming up myself in 2001 with it, I found the same methode in the cluster of my VW Golf in 2016-ish. The blue LEDs were so dim that I had to replace them. VW also used another methode for storing the 0.1km odometer values which I didn't bother figuring out.
@@BuyitFixit One idea about the two counters: Storing it twice could be a way to determine if the value was changed at some point. While one of them is displayed and can be changed with the programmer, the other one can only be read. This could be used as a tamper detection.
Its pretty interesting that they decided to store the decimal value with hexadecimal digits. I would have expected to see a hex to dec decode at some point. But you're taking the hex value directly and treat it as a fix-point-decimal and it seems to work.
I know others have said this already, but I'm amazed that you were willing to do all that for someone you didn't know on the other side of the world. Then to go that extra mile and work out how the data is stored. You're a diamond!
Very well done. You risked damaging your panel to help someone in my country (Aus). I'll bet if he took it to an authorized repairer they would have wanted to replace the entire panel at great expense.
Thanks, and absolutely! I've had issues with companies before where they wouldn't supply parts or would only replace the whole device great expense. An example would be the FLIR thermal camera I repaired after getting no help from FLIR (I show all of the emails on the video on my channel too), and another would be the solar inverter video called 'No password No problem' where I had to reverse engineer their software because they refused to give me a service password and said it's an old model, buy a new one! (I also did a video on repairing it as it was a dead unit when I got it).
Very impressive, well done! :) Certainly made interesting video too. Brought back a memory of my dad's old 1995 VW Golf Mk3 Variant, at some point the instrument cluster digital LCD odometer panel started showing only parts of the reading, except when the temperature was colder than -20C, then the numbers showed up completely. At the time I didn't know much about electronics, but now I'm guessing probably the LCD display solder joints were cracked or something. Eventually the whole instrument cluster was replaced. Too bad TH-cam didn't exist back then, would've saved a lot of money if I knew back then, what I've learned now from yours and others repair videos :)
Kudos ! what nice thing to do and I bet there aren't many farmers with a hobby like yours either, you could knock a couple or three hundred of yours we won't tell !.....cheers.
Absolutely fantastic video. The attitude, the great explanation skill and superb detective work. I wonder how did you realise what the magic value is. Thanks a lot!
Thank you too for your kind comment 👍 That online site I mentioned (in the video) I changed 1 of the byte values by 1 and uploaded it to see if anything changed. When the hours increased by 1. I then knew that for instance a 7 in the dump equated to a 1 in the hours. So at that point I knew 6 = 0, then it started to make sense 🙂👍
@@BuyitFixit now when you said it it sounds so simple. I guess that happens often with clever ideas. Again, thanks for sharing. Not that I can use the idea to fix the tractor mileage but because I enjoy your thoughts sequence and can educate myself.
Thanks 👍No, I've just always been interested in computers, electronics and programming since I was a kid. A lot of the stuff is just what I've discovered myself or picked up over the years. My brain just seems to have a knack for working out stuff like hex etc. The wife thinks I'm probably on the autistic spectrum somewhere. The "farmer" part is only in the last few years, and it's been a bit of a learning curve 😂😂😂
Re. the "magic value", it looks to me like it's using a variation of BCD (Binary Coded Decimal). If the value was stored in binary, they'd have to do the conversion from binary to decimal to display it, and that might be too much like hard work for a low-cost microcontroller. Using some form of BCD would be easier. With the digit 9 represented by F, adding 1 would make it wrap around to 0 and generate a carry into the next digit. It's easier to detect digit 0 and then add 6 than detect digit A.
The other message that comes through loud and clear is do not trust the hour meter on tractors and probably all machines. Like many here, I commend your actions in risking your tractor to help someone else.
Most likely used the same software to dump and write as it has an hex editor, my guess is he searched for your hours, came back with a hex code, he then converted his hours into hex code and replaced and reflashed :) how I repair corrupt mac bios and use a dump I have and change the serial back to theirs :) EDIT: I post this when the video was half way through :P he explains how :D
the data is stored as little Indian, also a tip for owner who have Hare and tortoise modes that dont work is to check the rear axel oil pressure switch and oil level.
I have a smallholding in the UK, 30 acres or so, all my tractors are 60s 70s 80s pre electronics, simple mechanical systems, I rarely have any problems with them. A quote from an engineer : "Perfection is reached, not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove....
@@BuyitFixit Ah sheep, however good your husbandry, a certain percentage seem to just die for no explicable reason, I never figured out why. I'll stick with cattle.
@@andypdq I think you can see them on the 2 x night vision monocular repair video that I did, or there's a picture of a couple of the 'expensive ' ones on the medical ultrasound video.
This is awesome, well done! Just wondering.. would it have been possible to download the flash with the chip on the PCB, I see there are 8 pin in-circuit clips available for this function.
Thanks 👍,Yes it is possible, although sometimes it's not straight forward (I've tried in the past with limited success). Normally you would need it powered from either an external source, and have the microcontroller held in reset, so it could not mess with the I/O lines of the EEProm.
It worked with Delphi Skoda OEM radio, I did not even have clips- just soldered fine wires to chips legs. It wasn't DIP8 "big" chip either but small SMD part.
I tried with a Landrover ECU once, to remove the immobiliser, but ended up having to remove the chip and read /write it, as it didn't like it being in the circuit.
![Lyman Turbo Sonic Ultrasound Cleaner - "Untested Customer Return" - [Repair]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/auE5GulLQXc/mqdefault.jpg)
The fact that you'd be willing to take apart something you own that works perfectly fine, just to help some random guy on the other side of the planet says a lot about you. The world could use more people like you good sir.
Thanks👍. He seemed to be in a bit of a pickle and it wasn't such a big job and he sent me a programmer. He also offered to pay me, but I said it was fine. I also volunteer at our local repair cafe, which we help people in the community repair their broken items free of charge (unless parts are needed and then it's up to them to pay for the parts).
I'll let you in on a dirty little secret: People who fix stuff usually get a little bit excited when something breaks, or when somebody comes to them with a problem like this, and they're only too happy to have an excuse to take something apart to figure out how it works. At least that's how it is with me anyway.
Helping somebody is just a bonus.. A little cherry on top! 🤣
@@JoeBob79569 Helping somebody is just a bonus, sadly though so many people consider the efforts worthless. As a result I stopped helping out, it was never for the money (I never got paid!), but I can't abide how ungrateful people can be. On saying that I do recall how grateful a local farmer was when I repaired his electric fences - I was able to do it for a few quid (popped mosfets usually) saved him hundreds and a lot of time too!
@@JoeBob79569 Oh, I get it. I'm the same way. I enjoy doing things like this and I enjoy helping people out of a jam. Sadly I find there are less and less people like this so when I stumble across one I like to let them know they've been noticed. 😁
@@JoeBob79569 This is so true, it's a poorly kept secret among my friends and acquaintances that if someone comes to me with something broken, if it's a thing I've never tried to repair I'll do the job for free (not parts mind you) as it's fun and I got to learn on more random stuff. Most of the time I end up getting some compensation anyway but helping people and sating my curiosity is always the best part.
That is a grand gesture on your part, respect
Thank you 👍🙂
100 per cent agree.
In a few years from now, some farmer will do a Hail Mary last ditch search for this exact issue and be absolutely amazed that it's been documented and resolved. Well done on what is an actual worldwide collaboration!
Thanks 👍yes hopefully it might be of some use to someone in the future. I think the eeprom is written to every 6 minute to update the .1 of an hour. So it could easily get corrupted.
More important than most will realise. We must have the right and ability to fix our stuff we own.
Totally agree 👍
This was brilliant, thank you for posting this. Helping out when we can, is what separates us from the animals. It's a choice.
Thanks for that 👍Yes I also volunteer at our local "repair cafe" where we help people in the local community repair their broken items.
Hmmm not very true animals do help each other too. Not helping would make us worse than animals
Glad your dash was working properly after removal, there's always some risk involved and the fact you did this to help someone the other side of the world is awesome, nice one mate!😀
Thanks 👍yes I'm glad it's still working too 🙂
Nice on the EEPROM HEX sniffing.
Thanks 👍
The conversion is simply Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) to decimal! (not some secret code to hide the true value). If you said this, I missed it. The addition of 6 when the value of a 4 bit nibble gets to 9 forces the number into the next nibble. It brought back memories from college in the late 80's playing with 8085 microprocessors and 74 series chips to drive 7 segment displays from BCD outputs from a microprocessor. PS recently found your channel and think it is brilliant! I find the real-world PCB rework very good to learn from as it shows ongoing real issues that will improve my skill now I am retired and picking up a new hobby.
Thanks yes BCD 👍 I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, been a while since I did this one. Thanks for the kind words 🤣
Really enjoy your channel, the philosophy of repair rather than replace is almost gone in our time. Being willing to do what you did for Alex is really a sign of your quality. Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much 👍🙂
would be great to upload this dump to the internet archive. as with any dump. just to preserve. manufacturers become more and more unwilling to help nowadays.
Good idea. I'll look into it.
"I don't think you'd probably find too many farmers willing to take the dashboard out of the tractor & desolder chips & read them with eeprom programmers or whatever but I'll have a go. Try to help the guy out"
I watched this video, mouth aghast, thinking this is absolutely the coolest thing. And about what a good person you are :') I'm so flipping impressed. I'm from Australia aswell. Learning about micro electronics repair this past year. You English have the best repair channels on TH-cam. :)
Thanks so much for your kind comments 👍 I always try to help people out if I can. Greetings from the UK to down under 😂👍
I have a Kubota that is about 5 years younger - it's still 100% electro-mechanical. No semiconductors to be found there, for which I am eternally grateful!
I've got a little Kubota RTV900 tipper truck. That doesn't have any semiconductors either.. Although the alternator just died, so I'm waiting for a new one to arrive (another job to do lol).
Heya, nice of you that you help someone at the other side of the world.
Cheers 👍Well, the channel is pretty much about helping people to repair stuff. I also volunteer at our local repair cafe too 🙂
Now you know, how to raise the value of your tractor 😅
But seriously: nice job, hacking this chip and helping out 👍
Thanks 👍
Mate that was very kind of you to take your tractor gauge cluster out to help him out.
Thanks 👍Yes, but a lot of the stuff I post is to help people who have problems with items or helping them to repair stuff. I even volunteer at our local repair cafe to help people in the community repair their broken items 🙂
Legendary problem-solving and troubleshooting skills coupled with an insatiable curiosity for knowing how things work and on top of that incredible practicality and common sense. Inspiring.
I want to thank you: I was in a challenging (for me) troubleshooting situation with a Nortek VRF (heat pump) system that multiple contractors had walked away from. I channeled your patience, calm, and reasoning and was able to solve the problem. Thank you! Most guys in my shoes would have said there's nothing that can be done and ran off.
Thanks Matt and well done on repairing the heat pump! 👍
1:30am. Have work in 6 hours. But here I am watching a video on tractor chips that appeared in my suggestion feed
Nice👍. I'm up bottle feeding two little lambs 😂😂🍼🍼🐑🐑
Enjoying your channel and this video. Finally understood that you were saying "dashboard" I think. Your accent (to my ears) was causing me issues - thank goodness for closed captioning😘
😂😂😂Sorry about that. My Northeast accent 👍
5 thumbs up just for doing this. Not too many folks out there featuring a tractor and electronics knowledge at the same time! Great!
Thanks 👍 I did another tractor electrical repair a while ago on a friends tractor (a good few video's back)
You're a true gentleman, of that, there are no doubts.
Pity there aren't more people like you around.
👍👍👍👍👍👍❤️❤️❤️😊😊😊😊😊
Thanks Nina 👍
Great work, I've done similar hex decoding and coding in desired values with Kenwood radios. Your desoldering of the IC and putting it back was very nice.
Thank you 👍
Truly a gentleman and a scholar!
Thanks 👍🙂
Wish more people where like you! Excellent video as Usual. You the man.
Thanks Mate👍 Much appreciated 🙂👍
Fair play for helping that fella out 👍
Thanks 👍
That was a very nice thing to do. Kudos to you for helping a stranger. Initially, I thought he just wanted the numbers off of it like his had burned the numbers off and couldn’t be read. I didn’t realize that he needed the stored data, and you would have to remove the chip from the board. Good on ya
Thanks 👍
Thanks Mick, lovely gesture 😀
Thanks Mike 👍🙂
You are a true hero.
Thanks! 👍🙂
Well done for helping someone else i will keep watching
Thanks Alison 😊
good job mate... havent seen people talking about eeproming in decades , glad there is still someone who knows the deal...
Thanks yes it's something I've not done in ages. I think the last time was about 7 years ago when a friend had a landrover discovery 2 and needed the immobiliser disabled 👍
Not only fix a tractor the other side of the world but go deeper into the milage etc. Sometimes I think you have too much time on your hands 🙂 I often wish I knew more about electronics and stuff but then think I was just born too late. Did manage to get some computer qualifications and used to build my own PC's though. It is SO good we are all not the same, what a boring World it would be, keep on keeping on, not only entertaining but educational, already looking forward to what you will find to fix next.
Thanks 👍much appreciated 🙂
That was cool never done chip reading etc was very nice of you to do that for him.
Intresting stuff
Thanks, yes I got a free reader which I've since used a few times on here (on the AVerMedia video capture card, and the generator control panel).
Very nice. I'm glad you took the time to help him.
Thanks 👍
Save yourself the time and trouble (and risk) to remove a chip from the board, use some DIP test clips. Most of the time you can read/write EEPROMs in-circuit. Test clips are available for SOIC as well.
Thanks for that. I've got some SOIC test clips, but I've had limited success when trying to read eeproms in circuit. I tried with a landrover ECU a while back and it wouldn't read. Was just easier to remove the chip.
It's nice to know you can send each other your dumps. I joined a subreddit for that but got different results.
😂😂😂😂
You for sure went above and beyond the call of duty for your fellow man ........I learned a few things in this episode ..... Great job Mon Ami ..
Thanks Cajun 👍🙂
Considering the most sophisticated tools my Dad needed for our tractor growing up were a sledge hammer, pocket knife, "Bob" the screw driver (a big old beater flat head) baling wire and if feeling fancy, electrical tape lol, tractors with computers in them are hard for me to really wrap my head around...
This one is pretty basic, I think it's only the dashboard that's computerised. I dont think the engine has any electronic controls. The newer ones are way more complicated and pretty much all controlled by computers including the engine like a modern day car.
A welder helps if you manage to let the block freeze. I live in Austria, home of the legendary Steyr 80 series tractors, one-cylinder Diesel pigs from the 50s. Most of them have had the block welded at least once, some twice. Some of the T80s were sold without any electrics whatsoever, the posh ones got two headlights, either a combined rear/brake/number plate light or two rear/brake lights and a number plate light, a glow plug, a generator with regulator and a starter. Oh and of course a horn.
seems like a pretty easy way to spoof the hours on these tracktors if you know what you are doing. i miss analog wheels where you could just roll it back by hand :D
😂😂😂😂
I'm glad to see that I wasn't the only one looking for your help across the pond 😂
😂😂😂Thanks Jose
@@BuyitFixit thank you
Very Awesome of you doing this to help a subscriber out Always love your vids went above and beyond Much Respect for Doing this
Thanks 👍Much appreciated
Great, you fixed it. And even RE'd the prom. Nice one! :)
Thanks 👍🙂
Your troubleshooting skills are legendary.
Thank you 👍
This is the most badass thing I've ever seen
Thanks 👍if you liked this then you might like the solar inverter I repaired and then had to figure out how the service password was calculated as the company wouldn't help me, or the ultrasound scanner where I unlocked a ton of hidden features and made it run doom 🙂
@@BuyitFixit I'll be sure to check them out during my binge :)
You’re such a nice person! You went through much hassle to help someone out. I wonder if there’s a repository for such data that could help someone in the future out as well?
Thanks 👍Someone suggested uploading it to internet archive. I guess you could even just pause the video and type in the bytes as there's probably only around 48 bytes or so.
Very nice of you, noone I know will dare to do this.
You should have put a IC socket on the chip? rather than soldering it back.. heat damage to PCB risk etc
Thanks, agree I probably should have put a socket in. I didn't think I had any, but found some a week or two ago (used them when looking at the caravan x70 PSU)
Excellent job, much respect. You are a true gentleman and a scholar.
You should have checked every bulb in that dash while you had it apart, cos as sure as bears sh1t in the woods, one or more of the bubs will blow now you've had it apart. It's Murphy's law.
Thanks 👍There was a few bulbs gone. Ideally I should try to get some LED replacements.
@@BuyitFixit you could make some LED lights yourself, a LED and resistor would do the job.
You can get premade ones but the cheap crappy ones won't last pissing time
@@generaldisarray I'll have to see if I can find some white LEDs
Way to help a fellow human!
Thanks 👍🙂
Hey bud big thanks for helping the guy out and it was a win 🎉
Sure was 🙂👍Thanks for commenting 🙂
Wow what a great human being the both of you are! Interesting segment about the hours too, I wonder where their magic value comes from. Theres got to be more to that number.
Thanks 👍I'm not too sure on the number. I was chatting to a friend of mine and I said it could be "the devils tractor" Case 666... and it is red after all 😂😂😂😂
I agree 110%
Wow just love your work thanks for your educational electronic lessons
Maybe one day could you show all the tools with soldering etc the same type lesson as you teach us I’m at the Capacitors diode resistors all that sort of stuff please
Cheers and thanks again
From Australia watching 😊
Thanks 👍really appreciated 🙂
Oh I do like a bit of hexadecimal digging. Congrats on the remote repair and being willing to risk your eprom for his tractor. Great result..
Thanks John👍if you like this sort of stuff check out the video I did on the solar inverter called 'no password no problem ' or the medical ultrasound I looked at and unlocked a ton of extra features, or the RGB laser I repaired 👍
@@BuyitFixit thanks for the tips will investigate. I learn that way, been around software and firmware engineering for about 20 years. They do keep things close to their chests I found. Or no time to explain to a non programmer☹️
Thanks John 👍
Fantastic video again nice of you to help 👍
Thanks 👍
before watching I was hoping it would be Marty T from NZ :D
I wasn't sure what you meant. I had to google it 😂😂
I don't think any of his equipment is anywhere near new enough to have a digital dash 😂
Very good, your reputation is obviously spreading furrow and wide. Surprised there was no JTAG connector, but each to their own. You were, of course, lucky that the text wasn't inverted.
😂
Thanks 👍
There are so many different JTAG headers & adapters, unless you have the platform specific tools. Its more hastle than removing the chip.
A JTAG connector is not good to use in the enviorment the tractor is operating I think.
So much respect to you for willing to do to this for stranger. Safe to say, no other youtuber would do this.
Thanks 👍I guess it's just the way I am. I always try to help people when I can.. I am also a volunteer at our local repair cafe which is once a month, where we help people in the local community, by trying to fix their broken items free of charge. (unless they need parts which they would either have to obtain or pay for).
great bloke, respect
Thank you 👍🙂
how you ever learned about HEX code is beyond me. That is something that almost everyone has no idea about. When I was taking programing in College, we had to write programs in the different types of bite level codes so we could understand how they work. Not an easy class to take either. Now, if you were teaching that class at the time, it would have made more sense to me, and I would have caught on faster. Awesome video! I am sure years from now there will be someone that finds this video and will learn how to program the proper way.
When I was a kid and got my first computer (ZX Spectrum) I remember messing around with hex then, and even on the commodore 64). I still remember Jet Set Willy when it first came out and everyone wanted a copy of it, but it had some pesky piece of paper with all of these codes you had to enter before it allowed you to play the game. I started searching through all the program and found all the 195 bytes which were the jump instruction that caused the cpu to jump to that location. I then tried calling the locations one by one to see what they did. Turned out location 34499 was the part to enter the code, so I did POKE 34499,201 (201 was the code for return) so when the game started it now jumped to the key code part and immediately returned without displaying it or asking for it to be entered and started the game. I think I was around 15 at the time 😂
lol, right out of the gate you were a genius! My first computer was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. If you wanted to play a game you had to know basic dos to program it, then you could save your game to a cassette. After I learned basic dos they came out with the extended vision of the trs-80. I never really messed with the hex or binary code though. Once I got into College I learned how to program in C, and from there just about all the other languages, but I really didn't like it too much, so I changed to Computer Forensics and learned how to hack, or should I say ethical hacking. lol I think that's awesome you would still remember how do work with HEX code. Not a lot of people understand it, but you would make an awesome instructor on it though.
Have a look at the medical ultrasound scanner video I did or the 'no password no problem' on the aurora solar inverter (this video was after I fixed the thing and the company said its obsolete buy a new one and wouldn't give a service password) I think you'll like them. First computer I learned to program on was a Nascom2 that a friend built from a kit and you had to load the basic interpreter from tape 😂👍
You are such a good human
Thanks Mate 👍
You are a clever fellow. A fascinating video!
Thanks David 👍
Fantastic Mick I learnt alot about programming, I have done tv EPROMs and just wondered how it works and what does what, next time I will have a play about, excellent result and glad Alex got his tractor working you’re the boss 😊
Thanks Mate, I'll hopefully have a look at your Switch this week 😉
@@BuyitFixit Thanks Mick no rush mate!
Enjoyed this one Mick, very interesting. I have a chip that needs re-programming, i bought all the gear to do it but failed miserably. I will need to stay at yours for a week so you can show me how to program it. 😁
😂😂😂😂👍
Forgive the very late comments...I'm working my way through all the vids ;) A while back I was using the engine & ECU etc out of an Alfa 166 for a project. The donor car I bought for the bits came with 2 keys, but only one of them talked to the inbuilt immobiliser within the ECU, which was a bit of an potential issue as I didn't want to rely on just one key. By chance, a kind soul on a forum I frequent had just solved this very issue by decoding the EEPROM in the unit that talked to the RFID blobs in the keys. Anyhoo...long story short, and getting to the point eventually....I was able to read the EEPROM in-situ with no problems and wondered if you'd ever tried that yourself? In my case, all we wanted to know was what code was stored for one of the active keys so we could duplicate it in a new RFID blob, rather than modifying the contents of the EEPROM, so no write back was needed.
@@chrissavage5966 No problem and thanks for checking out some of my other work 👍I've not had much success reading eeproms in situ. I tried a while back with a landrover ECU when a friend was in a similar situation to yourself and wanted the immobiliser disabled. I tried a few times bit kept getting read errors. The problem is that sometimes the CPU of a device interferes with signals, so the you have to have the device in reset constantly, also powering the eeprom can be an issue as you are effectively powering everything else connected to it.
@@BuyitFixit I confess I expected those sort of issues when it was suggested I could read the one I did in-situ, but it worked fine, much to my surprise. I take no credit for it though!
What a great bloke, respect to you. You helped him and in turn he helped you with further info.
Thanks 👍
Awesome work!
Thanks mate 👍
Guaranteed the magic value is there to stop cursory hex analysis from finding and altering the tractor hours, much like I assume the same is done for digital odometers.
Yes, agree 👍
Awesome! Great on ya to do that and always a great learning experience for sure. Very clever. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks also for commenting 👍Cheers Thrifty 🙂
Kudos to you Sir! You are awesome person!
Thank you kindly!👍
Great respect, to you for doing that.
Thanks 👍Was glad to help the guy out, and also made an interesting reverse engineering video 🙂
For odometers in cars where storing in EEPROM would happen more often than the maximum numbers of write they use a simple wear leveling methode which only works for ascending numbers: There is a row of numbers stored, say 4 times. The highest one is the one being displayed and the lowest number is the one to be overwritten next. So that is a 1:4 wear leveling. Works perfect, because I did this with a PIC16F874 back in 2001. The products (about 2000 were sold until 2016) still come in for service and no EEPROM has ever failed until now.
Interesting solution! Thank you for commenting 👍I did have another dump from a different tractor that someone sent me to look at and it has the value duplicated 3 times but it's all the same value. This had 2503 hours. A friend of mine worked this out after I sent it to him, I had company over so didn't have a chance to look at it myself.
00000000h: AA FF 00 02 4A A4 93 83 00 02 4A A4 93 83 00 02 ; ªÿ..J¤“ƒ..J¤“ƒ..
00000010h: 4A A4 93 83 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 42 00 8F 14 ; J¤“ƒ........B..
00 02 4A A4 = 150180 mins
00 02 4A A4 93 83
the last byte 83 is the sum of the previous. We aren't sure on the 93 byte though.
@@BuyitFixit Yeah that is odd. With the checksum being explicitly for the counter only, one would guess that the 93 must be related to that counter value somehow. But I have no idea what it could be. Concerning wear leveling: After coming up myself in 2001 with it, I found the same methode in the cluster of my VW Golf in 2016-ish. The blue LEDs were so dim that I had to replace them. VW also used another methode for storing the 0.1km odometer values which I didn't bother figuring out.
@@BuyitFixit One idea about the two counters: Storing it twice could be a way to determine if the value was changed at some point. While one of them is displayed and can be changed with the programmer, the other one can only be read. This could be used as a tamper detection.
Its pretty interesting that they decided to store the decimal value with hexadecimal digits. I would have expected to see a hex to dec decode at some point. But you're taking the hex value directly and treat it as a fix-point-decimal and it seems to work.
It's stored as BCD binary coded decimal. It seems the add 6 is a common way of converting the value (a few people commented after making this video) 👍
You should have fixed your fuel gauge while it was out ;) Thanx for the videos. 👍
Thanks 👍it just didn't have much diesel in 😂😂
I know others have said this already, but I'm amazed that you were willing to do all that for someone you didn't know on the other side of the world. Then to go that extra mile and work out how the data is stored. You're a diamond!
Thanks 👍you also have to remember that I like messing with electronics and figuring out how stuff works. It's just how I'm wired I guess 🙂
Awesome of you!
Thanks 👍
Champion! Your a star ⭐️
Thanks 👍
Very well done. You risked damaging your panel to help someone in my country (Aus). I'll bet if he took it to an authorized repairer they would have wanted to replace the entire panel at great expense.
Thanks, and absolutely! I've had issues with companies before where they wouldn't supply parts or would only replace the whole device great expense. An example would be the FLIR thermal camera I repaired after getting no help from FLIR (I show all of the emails on the video on my channel too), and another would be the solar inverter video called 'No password No problem' where I had to reverse engineer their software because they refused to give me a service password and said it's an old model, buy a new one! (I also did a video on repairing it as it was a dead unit when I got it).
That was great you could help him im in South Australia he is in the country of New South wales near Sydney i think
Thanks Kriss 👍
Very impressive, well done! :) Certainly made interesting video too.
Brought back a memory of my dad's old 1995 VW Golf Mk3 Variant, at some point the instrument cluster digital LCD odometer panel started showing only parts of the reading, except when the temperature was colder than -20C, then the numbers showed up completely.
At the time I didn't know much about electronics, but now I'm guessing probably the LCD display solder joints were cracked or something. Eventually the whole instrument cluster was replaced.
Too bad TH-cam didn't exist back then, would've saved a lot of money if I knew back then, what I've learned now from yours and others repair videos :)
Thanks MrJSV 👍
Great video again 👏👏👏
Thank you so much 👍
Kudos ! what nice thing to do and I bet there aren't many farmers with a hobby like yours either, you could knock a couple or three hundred of yours we won't tell !.....cheers.
😂😂😂Cheers Andymouse 👍👍
Absolutely fantastic video. The attitude, the great explanation skill and superb detective work. I wonder how did you realise what the magic value is. Thanks a lot!
Thank you too for your kind comment 👍 That online site I mentioned (in the video) I changed 1 of the byte values by 1 and uploaded it to see if anything changed. When the hours increased by 1. I then knew that for instance a 7 in the dump equated to a 1 in the hours. So at that point I knew 6 = 0, then it started to make sense 🙂👍
@@BuyitFixit now when you said it it sounds so simple. I guess that happens often with clever ideas. Again, thanks for sharing. Not that I can use the idea to fix the tractor mileage but because I enjoy your thoughts sequence and can educate myself.
Thanks 👍
Are you trained in this stuff? How do you know so much about electronics and I assume you are a farmer as well. It is impressive what you can do.
Thanks 👍No, I've just always been interested in computers, electronics and programming since I was a kid. A lot of the stuff is just what I've discovered myself or picked up over the years. My brain just seems to have a knack for working out stuff like hex etc. The wife thinks I'm probably on the autistic spectrum somewhere. The "farmer" part is only in the last few years, and it's been a bit of a learning curve 😂😂😂
That was great! Thank you!
You're so welcome!
Nice work! "Hi" from Melbourne OZ
Hello there! And Thanks 👍
Re. the "magic value", it looks to me like it's using a variation of BCD (Binary Coded Decimal). If the value was stored in binary, they'd have to do the conversion from binary to decimal to display it, and that might be too much like hard work for a low-cost microcontroller. Using some form of BCD would be easier. With the digit 9 represented by F, adding 1 would make it wrap around to 0 and generate a carry into the next digit. It's easier to detect digit 0 and then add 6 than detect digit A.
Could well be. Someone else mentioned similar and it seems a common way to convert to BCD by adding 6 👍
Awesome fix. Nice one
Thanks 👍
much respect. Great Job sir.
Thank you kindly sir 🙂👍
You are one of the best i have seen. Excellent. What is your background?
@@fuzzs8970 There is a small bit about me in the channel about page 👍
Like I said before your a top bloke mick
Thanks 👍
The other message that comes through loud and clear is do not trust the hour meter on tractors and probably all machines.
Like many here, I commend your actions in risking your tractor to help someone else.
Thanks 👍
Most likely used the same software to dump and write as it has an hex editor, my guess is he searched for your hours, came back with a hex code, he then converted his hours into hex code and replaced and reflashed :) how I repair corrupt mac bios and use a dump I have and change the serial back to theirs :)
EDIT: I post this when the video was half way through :P he explains how :D
Yep, explained it and how the the data is stored 🙂👍
great fix! very impressive
Thanks 👍
So clever, great fix 👍
Thanks 👍
What a great video. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
the data is stored as little Indian, also a tip for owner who have Hare and tortoise modes that dont work is to check the rear axel oil pressure switch and oil level.
Indian 😂gotta love auto correct (my phone did the same when trying to type endian). Thanks for the info 👍
Top bloke👍👍
Thanks Darren
Quality stuff! 👍
Thanks! 👍
I have a smallholding in the UK, 30 acres or so, all my tractors are 60s 70s 80s pre electronics, simple mechanical systems, I rarely have any problems with them. A quote from an engineer : "Perfection is reached, not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove....
When you put few hours on your machinery per year, complexity is your enemy.
Agree, we have about 30 acres too, and about 70 sheep or so 👍🙂
@@BuyitFixit Ah sheep, however good your husbandry, a certain percentage seem to just die for no explicable reason, I never figured out why. I'll stick with cattle.
@@andypdq I think you can see them on the 2 x night vision monocular repair video that I did, or there's a picture of a couple of the 'expensive ' ones on the medical ultrasound video.
This is awesome, well done! Just wondering.. would it have been possible to download the flash with the chip on the PCB, I see there are 8 pin in-circuit clips available for this function.
Thanks 👍,Yes it is possible, although sometimes it's not straight forward (I've tried in the past with limited success). Normally you would need it powered from either an external source, and have the microcontroller held in reset, so it could not mess with the I/O lines of the EEProm.
It worked with Delphi Skoda OEM radio, I did not even have clips- just soldered fine wires to chips legs. It wasn't DIP8 "big" chip either but small SMD part.
I tried with a Landrover ECU once, to remove the immobiliser, but ended up having to remove the chip and read /write it, as it didn't like it being in the circuit.
zGood on ya!!!. and what a ripper of a board, all those through holse
Thanks 👍
Faulty dashes are a common problem on all case/new holland tractors.
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that.
Cand you do a video on how to remove a VW golf window lock switch and add usb port where the switch used to be
Hmm, I'd probably have to buy a VW Golf to do that 😂😂