"Reset" - What's in a name?

There's not much uniformity amongst diagnostic cable makers when it comes to naming conventions (this is not intended as a not a criticism, just a statement of fact). I'm trying to understand the exact meaning of the simple and ubiquitous term RESET which appears to be applied differently amongst different manufactureres.

For VCDS cable, the term appears on the adaptation channel change screen (see below)



Can someone explain precisely what this term means when applied to a VCDS cable? Is it akin to turning-off the engine/accessories with the ignition key (and opening the S contact?)? If this is so, how does "Soft reset" apply to modules that don't have a terminal 15 pin (i.e. CAN Gateway)? Also when does Soft reset actually happen?

And also, does VCDS have a software "hard reset", which some other cable manufactures define as being akin to removing the battery supply from a control module (i.e. interrupt vector zero)?

Don

DV52 said:

There's not much uniformity amongst diagnostic cable makers when it comes to naming conventions

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I wish people would think about this whole business more in terms software makers rather than cable makers. In the end, this business is all about the software; not so much the cable -- even if cable is is intelligent enough to have diagnostic software and a web server embedded in it like our HEX-NET does. As a general rule, we try to name things in a manner that similar to the factory tools, but even those aren't completely consistent or uniform between major generations.

DV52 said:

Can someone explain precisely what this term means when applied to a VCDS cable? Is it akin to turning-off the engine/accessories with the ignition key (and opening the S contact?)? If this is so, how does "Soft reset" apply to modules that don't have a terminal 15 pin (i.e. CAN Gateway)? Also when does Soft reset actually happen?

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I do not think this can be answered in a definitive way without knowing exactly what the control module in question does in response to the rest command, and that would require one to have specifications or source code for the software running in the module, which we do not.

DV52 said:

And also, does VCDS have a software "hard reset", which some other cable manufactures define as being akin to removing the battery supply from a control module (i.e. interrupt vector zero)?

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Is it possible that our "soft reset" is the same as their "hard reset" or do they have two different resets?

-Uwe-

Uwe said:

I wish people would think about this whole business more in terms software makers rather than cable makers. In the end, this business is all about the software; not so much the cable -- even if cable is is intelligent enough to have diagnostic software and a web server embedded in it like our HEX-NET does. As a general rule, we try to name things in a manner that similar to the factory tools, but even those aren't completely consistent or uniform between major generations. -

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Thanks for the reply and understood!

Uwe said:

Is it possible that our "soft reset" is the same as their "hard reset" or do they have two different resets?

-Uwe-

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Yes. The cable that I'm thinking-of (Bluetooth dongle)has both types of reset which the manufacturer explained as in my original post; Soft-reset =virtual ignition-off , Reset (my "hard reset") = virtual removal of battery, which means in practice (I've found) that all of the starting values (pre-set variables) in the control module (like the values that result from calibration procedures in the basic settings) are zeroed as well as what happens in a soft-reset).

Don

PS: Sorry to be a pest, but on a VCDS cable, if the "soft reset" box is ticked, when does the reset actually occur? - is it when the box is ticked, when the "Doit! tab is selected (i.e. after the setting in the adaptation channel is actually changed), when the user exists the adaptation screen, when the module is closed, or when the user exits the software?

Uwe said:

Is it possible that our "soft reset" is the same as their "hard reset" or do they have two different resets?

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See FS#462 for details ($01 Hard Reset, $02 KeyOffOnReset, $03 Soft Reset). IMO it would be nice to have the reset as a separate function where one could actually select from the 3 variants.

@Don, the reset command is sent after the coding / adaptation has been saved. Same as ODIS does it.

^^^^^ OOOhhhhhhhh............................"FS#462" sounds like something that I would enjoy reading!!! I assume that it's on the wiki -hyperlink pretty please

Don

PS: thanks for the response

That's our internal bugtracker, where in addition to proprietary info, less than restrained comments (mostly by myself!) also abound. I bet lots of people would enjoy reading it, but it's just not happening

^^ Arhhh... Yes, Now that you have responded, I can recall Dana mentioning "FS" numbers to one of my previous proposals - I like to think of the Anagram as being short for "Fantastic Suggestion"- but somehow I doubt that I'm correct!!

DV52 said:

^^ Arhhh... Yes, Now that you have responded, I can recall Dana mentioning "FS" numbers to one of my previous proposals - I like to think of the Anagram as being short for "Fantastic Suggestion"- but somehow I doubt that I'm correct!!

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