Electronic & Hydraulic Shifting (Di2, Ui2, customisations)

makes me fucking SEETHE that there isnt a mac version of etube. lazy fucking shimano

(thankful that my IT guys let me install it on my work laptop)

Macs >>>

Is it your work? Can you not borrow their diag kit for one night?

Yeah but as I say, Mac only at home and I don't want to have to go through the hassle of trying to get etube going in a virtual windows

I actually have a decent Windows laptop but I'm locked out of it, needs a fresh image/os install and idk about that

I assumed they had it plugged into a shop laptop you could also take.

I have a few laptops but you're not west any more are you?

Ah no, desktop from the last century

Nope I go between SW & SE these days

You don't happen to know how I go about putting a fresh windows on a laptop without admin access or a Windows license key do you?
I imagine it's child's play for a man of your skill

Depends what install media you have access to I guess. I've not actually had to fuck around with that for a few years having pre-installed Windows for the most part.

You can get Windows password crackers. I've used one of those before to rescue a laptop. I've got it here on a CD somewhere. Called Orphcrack or something similar. I'm suggesting it's probably quicker to try and crack the password than reinstall.

Wow, for an alco, my memory is holding up: https://ophcrack.sourceforge.io/

OPHcrack not ORPHcrack. But I'll take it.

Does the laptop in question have a CD/DVD/Bluray drive? Are you even old enough to know what these are?

No disc drive. I actually do remember using floppies as a kid. Not a euph. I'm not that young!

Anyway I tried a new junction A, no fucking difference so it's a wire or junction B I guess

You don't have an external CD drive? Rookie.

I presume, though I've not tried it, that you can also stick OPHcrack onto a bootable USB drive. Does the laptop bios have a password too? If not, can you see if you can make it boot from USB? Then try sticking an OPHcrack stick in. This is a lot easier when you have all this shit lying around obvs

Do you have more than one Di2 bike available?

You could test the batt in another bike, right? You could also test shifters, etc but depends how much spare cable you have or if you have cable extender.

I wanna crack your laptop though.

Is your password "password"?
Is it, hmm, "DoASkid"?
What about "FIXIE4LYF!"

Just plug the battery in the RD, see if you can do front shifts or viceversa.

Only the one di2 bike. I'm not made of money.

I believe there is a password on the bios too.
Without going into too much detail, it's an inherited ex corporate machine, I can log in and use it but can't make any changes/install anything

I'd either crack the password or try and get a copy of Windows to install from somewhere. You used to be able to get BIOS password crackers. Presume you still can although I also presume it's less easy now. I've not had to do that for 20 years or something.

Nah, its a closed system within the shifter. All the circuit boards and switches are in little boxes glued shut :(

We need to get Bunny Huang up in this shit. Tell him how Shimano has succeeded in preventing us from reverse engineering their gear for more than a decade, and he'll be grinding through that epoxy and sussing those guts through a microscope faster than you can say 'fuck proprietary bullshit'.

All this is what makes me worried more about the demise of cable shifting. Last thing I want is more software to faff around with (already do enough of that in the day job).

the demise of cable shifting

LOL. 95% of cyclists probably don't even know electronic shifting exists.

Also, in 8+ years of Di2 I've never touched the software, except for during Transiberica where I had a very weird total system shutdown that was fixed by plugging it into bike shop machine. I've broken more cables in that time so I'm fine with that. I still wonder if it was something to do with the generator/power substation thing at the top of the mountain - like EMF got its brain shagged out?

Remapping car/motorcycle engines is common, yet strangely nobody has hacked di2.
It surely can’t be that difficult for the right people?

Remapping engines gets you more power, efficiency, top speed, blah blah blah. Fiddling with Di2 gets you... ?

Most of the stuff it can do is configured in the software isn't it? Like speed of changes, etc. Automatic shifting, etc. I've never even looked.