Programming cable investigation. Looking for PID and VID

[Satfrx]

Hello,

I'm investigating the programming cable. It seems GM used a nice trick so the cable is easy to use.
The cable uses an MCU that presents itself as a HID, this HID will not change portnumbers as a USB-Serial adapter will.

I imagine the software talks to the Vendor ID and Product ID of the cable to determine the richt devide to talk to.

This made me wonder if a simple chip like MCP2200 would be able to replace te programming cable.


I do not have the original cable, but the concept is nice.
Maybe someone can check the VID en PID in the windows control panel, so I can see if the MCP2200 starts transmitting data when the programming tool wants to connect.

Kind regards,

  Edwin

[Wadda]

I don't have a Windows machine handy, but if a replacement chip is HID compliant the only other question is if the client is.

Manufacturer/Product ID: 0001:0001 is as brown paper wrapper as you can get.  (Which is what my cable reports.)

If the application specifically call for MeiXin MeiXin Programmer (also my cable) and you don't have it; you’d be toast.

I just haven't looked at the tag along libraries/ocx to see if it's buried in there....'cause I have a cable.

[Satfrx]

Thanks for the quick reply Wadda,

I'll try and program a chip with this data, Im curious what it does...

The configurataion tool should allow to do this.


I found vid end pid are also in the program (hex editor data of exe file), changing this to a serial HID device  vid/pid I have already did not show any data on the oscilloscope.
It is quite unlikely the description is used to communicate to, but why changingh the pid/vid in teh exe did not work is a bit strange.

I hope to find some time next weekend to conduct some experiments.

[Wadda]

Yeah, quick but not much help.

I don't know the voltage level coming off the controller (5, 3.3, 1.8 );
HID protocol;
Visual Basic;
ActiveX;
much less Windows, or the guts of application itself.

But without configuration, the application 'knows' which device to chat with and not connect to some other HID. 

My guess is that it's coded into the exe or ocx, and a replacement will need to impersonate the interface or be edited in.

Good luck with your experiments.