Ok this may sound ridiculous but I am really interested in becoming a programmer...so I could program my friends cars PCM's. Does anyone know of any official brand name programs I could purchase? And if anyone could inform me about any schools involved in programming? Any help would be great and if anyone already is involved in this field, then any information would be great for me. Thanks –Jon

DHP has a forum for using there tuner.

Programming requires software and then it's just learning. The problem with most software is that it costs a lot of money and only works on a handful of vehicles. Some vehicles can't be tuned because the pcms haven't been hacked and thus no parameters are known. If you're wanting to work on your friends vehicles, you had better have deep pockets unless they're paying you.

The cheapest vehicles to tune yourself today, afaik, is the late model Mitsu Evo/Eclipse/Galant and of course Stratus based on them. Free software is available to scan and tune, all you need buy is a $100 cable to hook to your laptop. I wish our GPs were that simple.

jon, buy the tuner so u can tune my car

x2 JON haha

ha, i wish...i will and i seriouslt considering it. I am going to think this over. I have the laptop and the skills, i just dont have the program. Ill see what i can do to get it.

What kind of vehicles are you looking to tune? That will determine what kind of software/hardware to be looking at.

tune my car jon!lol...lets order some pcm's...and then we'll split the tuner...maybe

You have zero tuning skills till you've actually been doing it for a long time. I've been doing it once in a while since last summer and I wouldn't even say I had skills at it. I just kind of know what to do.

[/qb][/QUOTE]You have zero tuning skills [/QB][/QUOTE]

wow zuulmusic, i was talking about computers, I know I dont have skills in programming...but thanks for letting everyone know... lol I asked a few posts up where I could learn information, I think that says it all. But I plan on learning and I really do want to look into that field. The cars I am looking to program will be 97 and 03. I believe they are really different from what i heard and 98-02 is one group too. But I will make things work if I read up and learn more, it will happen...

hahah oh ok. you said "i just dont have the program" so thats what I figured you meant.

Are you interested in learning to program so you can develop some career prospects, or primarily to learn how to program computers in today's cars - such as the Grand Prix's?

If you're interested in long term career prospects, I'd recommend you look into some formal education at a local community college, or four year college. Most people with good logical and critical thinking skills can learn to program in various languages fairly quickly - even if they do it in a self-taught fashion.

I'm not familiar with what schools are located in the Philly area, but if you are interested in Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon, located in the Pittsburg area is one of the best C.S. schools in the country, if not the world.

Let me know if you have any more questions and I'll see what I can offer.

Programming computers in cars really requires some knowledge of computer hardware as well as programming skills. Many people who program for a living don't care to, or don't want to learn about lower level code and hardware and how they work together.

Something else I just remembered that might be of interest to you. I recently had an interesting conversation with the person who heads up the automotive education dept at a local community college (local to me). They have a very interesting program setup. Due to the projected national shortage of auto techs, they have a joint program running that is tied directly into the Ford corporate training courses, as well as linkage to local Ford dealers. Once you get beyond some initial training they put you right into some Ford corporate training courses via computer, and you get placed at a local dealership for some part time shadowing/mentoring while you're still in the program. Once you graduate, you have a guaranteed job at a local dealership. Ford also provides various vehicles to the program for students to get some hands on with new vehicles.

I'm sure there is something similar in your area, although it might not be tied into Ford, it still could have some excellent direct linkage to some of the auto manufacturers. For example, I know of another person who came to Orlando from the Ohio area I think it was to go to a special Jaguar related tech school.

If you're really interested in automotive electronics, a program like this might really be more what you're looking for.

Just a thought. Oh yeah, it turns out that with this particular Ford sponsored program, I think a lot of the tuition was paid by Ford if you committed to working at a Ford dealer.

Hey rocketman, I am looking to make a career out of this programming. If not this then something in the computer field and with cars. It is what I personaly like to do the most, and considering i didn't run into anything else that seems like it will make me through my 80 remaining years, this may be the path I am looking for. Thanks man and I will definitly look into this. Thanks again. -Jon