Years ago, I loaded the M105-303 map into my PCIIIr, with some minor low-speed fueling and WOT timing changes of my own. Ran great with my stock engine and Jardine hi-mounts.

Recently, I had a FPR failure, and decided to do some other long-overdue (17 years) maintenance, such as new throttle body boots, new water pump, new coolant....and other minor stuff. At the end of all this, I decided to have a look at the PC map I loaded eight years ago, just for fun.

Wow! Using the "Compare" function on the PC Control Center (version 2.7.8.22, released during the Nixon administrationI, I think. ) I could see that most of the fueling cell values had changed little bit, and in a few cased quite a bit. [ None of the timing cells had changed, FYI. ] The bike didn't run particularly BAD with these odd values, but they certainly weren't what I wanted in there. I reloaded my M105-303....all good.

Why did the values change? Possibly due to me fiddling with the three adjustment buttons on the unit. I seem to recall doing this a long time ago to get some mileage on a long slab ride to the Gap area....but that's in the foggy past. Or possibly the values corrupt over time due to..........dunno. My bet is on fiddling with the damn buttons, but I also thought I had returned the tune to what was loaded. Clearly, you can't "see" the values when you fiddle with the buttons, so I would recommend you never use them. Again.

Sooooo.....if you're using a Power Commander, you might want to check your map to see if it's as you think it should be. I figure I'll do it again in a few months to see if anything has changed (without touching the damn buttons, of course).

In my case, I no longer have a laptop that would run the ancient PC Control Center software, so I bought a 20 foot serial port cable (Amazon, $9, male and female ends) that just made it out to the garage from my office desktop (which, fortunately, had a IOIOI serial port!).

if you absolutely need to you can use a serial to usb adapter and create a virtual serial com port on your laptop. they're reasonably inexpensive.



the values in the cells won't change. no way. you would have to have done it manually with the buttons on the unit.


if the map were able to corrupt itself over time PC would have some pretty serious questions to answer.

A USB to DB9 serial port cable worked fine on my laptop running Win7.
I had all three software packages installed to talk to PCIIIr, PCIIIUSB, and PCV.

Never touch the buttons!


Cell Values do not change on their own...

LoL! Then WTF are they there for? You know damn good and well we're gonna push 'em!

You do realize they no longer off those buttons on the current PCV's right

The buttons have three faults:

1. They never return to the original starting point even if you do the exact opposite presses

2. They control a very wife field of cell values that defeats the entire purpose of having a powercommander in the first place

3. Guys that have no business playing with the buttons will inevitable screw something up rather than make something better.

jondog is absolutely correct! You give us buttons, we gonna push 'em!

LDH is absolutely correct! You give us buttons, we gonna screw things up!

As I mentioned in my case, I **think** I did some fiddling with midrange fueling, in hopes of getting 33 mpg instead of 32. And I think I intended to work the buttons back to the 105-303 map setting, but now it's clear that I didn't. Using the buttons is like using an oxy-acetylene torch to adjust your valves: It might work, but most likely will not give you desired results.

All of this explains the totally crazy map that was in this PC that I bought used nearly a decade ago. The map was supposed to be the RC3rsatokyle7 map (Dan Kyle Racing, LDH 03/23/02), but was total gibberish. It had zero relation to ANY DynoJet or DK map that was available at the time (or now). I now realize that the previous owner was using the buttons to do something, and the crazy, fukd map was the result.

And finally, one of the defaults of the PC Control Center is for "Reset Buttons". Yep, that means THOSE buttons, to return any button fiddling to zero, along with whatever new or reflashed map you chose to go with. Once this is done, you now know what your map will be, and hopefully remain for decades to come.

Unless you fiddle with the damn buttons!

As for the suggestions regarding USB/DB9/serial port/laptop connections to the ancient PC on the bike, all true and appreciated. But for me, it was a no-brainer to get the long DB9/IOIOI cable, run it to the bike that's about 15 feet away in my GarageMahal, and do my investigations and reloads that way.

[So let me tell you about the equally long USB cable I had to run to load maps into my Duc using TuneBoy programming!]

So, all good, and if you've ever fiddled with the buttons....time for a reload of the map you THOUGHT you had in there!

Ok, I get what they're NOT for.
Now, what ARE they for?

I have no intent of touching the ones on my PC3r, but why did Dynojet put them there in the first place? Especially if they are not intended for non-professionals, like more than half of us that run them.

I've never actually had that conversation with anyone at Dynojet, but an educated guess would lead me to believe that the buttons were put there as marketing to soothe the mind of potential customers who might not like the idea of relying on the new technology of loading a map and being stuck with it while out on the road or maybe as an emergency adjustment with early Fi systems that didn't compensate very well for AAP etc.

That sounds reasonable. The buttons are there IF you really need them....but you don't really need them!

I've been fiddling with and learning about PCs since 2004 with my 2000 VFR, and I've never seen any mention of using the buttons on any forum of any kind for any reason, with the exception of the AIR COOLED guys. They seem to have some tribal knowledge of fattening the mix for "parade duty", thinning it down for cool highway running, etc. Who knows if they have it right or not, but they do have a giant pool of knowledge and experiences to draw from, and this might pertain to what LDH touched upon regarding "early FI systems".

Anyhoo.......don't touch the damn buttons [jondog! ]. And maybe check your map even if you haven't touched the damn buttons....