[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by NoDOHC

Well said. I think that once the ECU is installed in the car, reading crank signal and pulsing ignition coils and injectors correctly, any competent tuner can tune any ECU (Including Megasquirt) about as easily as another one. Most aftermarket ECUs will require some changes to the wiring and will require some effort to get connected to the engine and firing all the appropriate drivers at the appropriate times.

That I will disagree with. Now, I haven't toyed with the MS software extensively but I will say that there is no way that is as easy to tune as some of the other softwares out there. There are certain functions and "add-ons" if you will to other ECU softwares that make thing SOOOOO much easier. Since I know the MoTeC V3 the best, I'll give a few examples.
Once I have my L table filled out correctly I can hold the engine at a certain cell in the fuel map (that is incorrectly input), press a single button on the keyboard, and the ECU will automatically change the input number to what is calculated to give the correct L. By doing this at a few different sites, you can manually interpolate the numbers and VERY quickly come up with a base map. Make a few pulls and make a few adjustments from there. VERY easy.
The MoTeC can also correctly and internally calculate the difference in needed pw to accomodate for different sized prim/sec injectors. Once you setup a few parameters including the 3d map for sec fueling, there is no other adjustments to make for the sec injectors, it's all internal. On the datalogs you can watch the primary injectors duty cycle increase to a certain point, start to fall off as the secondaries come on, they meet at a certain pw determined by sizing differences and then they both head off togeter. by inputting a percent number you can enrich or enlean the map AT THE POINT when the secondaries come on and control how much, how little, and for how long it is either enriched or enleaned.
Injector timing
The PID functions for idle/boost control are VERY easy to work with and HIGHLY adjustable. Much more than the Haltechs/microtechs
OMP control or DBW is pretty damn easy to accomplish
Troubleshooting is ridiculously easy with some of the screen displays that are available.
And one of my favorites is the datalogging. The datalogs that I have seen from the Haltech are all in a basic MS Excel format. Not very easy on the eyes and if you want to see it in graph form, it takes a few minutes to "arrange it" With the V3 and the i2, after a dyno run I press CTRL+F8 to get the logged data and give it a name, and press enter. Alt+Tab moves me to the i2 software. CTRL+a closes the previous log, CRTL+o opens all the log files, Home then enter brings up the latest log. I have up to a meg, there is an internal option that allows up to 3 megs of logging. The Pro Analysis option is just silly. Graph overlays, advanced math functions, syncronized video..... just crazy stuff that allows much easier tuning of the entire vehicle.
So I don't agree with the statement that the MS, Haltech, or microtech are about as easy to tune as the others, or as user friendly. Can they do it? Well, they can do most things, but in the end, in Perfect Competition - which this almost is, at the end of the day they're all ECU's, you get what you pay for. MoTeC is >$4k for a box, and MS is 10% of that. They both can run a basic engine almost as well as another when tuned by a competent person. However, you get what you pay for in competition so I don't agree with saying that all ecu's are equal.