986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners - View Single Post

ike84 · 05-27-2021, 06:17 PM

There are two parts to a piwis system - the software and the hardware. For the piwis 2 system (which is no longer used by Porsche), the hardware module was produced by a company called samtec. I don't know the how or why, but those units (which appear to be genuine from samtec, not Porsche branded) are now being funneled for sale through 3rd party vendors in china.

Software is a different story. Obviously porsches software is propietary and copyrighted. There are 2 requirements for the piwis software to work properly - "tester imprinting" which is the active "subscription" for which vendors would have to pay porsche in order to keep their machines running, and a com unit that the software will recognize.

Someone along the way (at least twice that I am aware of) used a hard drive backup system to clone a piwis computer. It is pirated software and yes, it is illegal in every sense of the word. And no I AM NOT TELLING ANYONE TO BREAK THE LAW AND I ACTIVELY DISCOURAGE DOING SO.

But, it's not illegal for me to describe it to the good folks of this forum...

One copy is piwis 15.x and runs on windows XP. This is a very difficult copy to work with in any manner so stay away from it. The second copy is piwis 18.1 which ran on windows 7. This version is very workable. If you buy a piwis com unit from overseas you will have the option of purchasing a tablet or laptop with that software already loaded and the "tester. Imprint" addressed. It adds considerable expense though. On the other hand it is possible to find the software (along with instructions for bypassing the imprint requirements) for download on the interwebs. You have to be tech savvy in order to get it to work, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out - either restore the image as a VM using oracle box or VMWare and use the com unit as usb passthrough, or just use an older PC lying around and restore the image as a physical machine (don't sideload win 7 on a machine that is currently running windows 10, just trust me).

Hope that answers. Your questions.

Btw, porsche built in this interesting feature to piwis ii - they planned on discontinuing use of it around 2018, so the programming features of the software won't work if your windows system date is set to anything after that time....or so I have been told...

Sent from my POCOPHONE F1 using Tapatalk

05-27-2021, 06:17 PM	#27
ike84 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: KY Posts: 1,216	There are two parts to a piwis system - the software and the hardware. For the piwis 2 system (which is no longer used by Porsche), the hardware module was produced by a company called samtec. I don't know the how or why, but those units (which appear to be genuine from samtec, not Porsche branded) are now being funneled for sale through 3rd party vendors in china. Software is a different story. Obviously porsches software is propietary and copyrighted. There are 2 requirements for the piwis software to work properly - "tester imprinting" which is the active "subscription" for which vendors would have to pay porsche in order to keep their machines running, and a com unit that the software will recognize. Someone along the way (at least twice that I am aware of) used a hard drive backup system to clone a piwis computer. It is pirated software and yes, it is illegal in every sense of the word. And no I AM NOT TELLING ANYONE TO BREAK THE LAW AND I ACTIVELY DISCOURAGE DOING SO. But, it's not illegal for me to describe it to the good folks of this forum... One copy is piwis 15.x and runs on windows XP. This is a very difficult copy to work with in any manner so stay away from it. The second copy is piwis 18.1 which ran on windows 7. This version is very workable. If you buy a piwis com unit from overseas you will have the option of purchasing a tablet or laptop with that software already loaded and the "tester. Imprint" addressed. It adds considerable expense though. On the other hand it is possible to find the software (along with instructions for bypassing the imprint requirements) for download on the interwebs. You have to be tech savvy in order to get it to work, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out - either restore the image as a VM using oracle box or VMWare and use the com unit as usb passthrough, or just use an older PC lying around and restore the image as a physical machine (don't sideload win 7 on a machine that is currently running windows 10, just trust me). Hope that answers. Your questions. Btw, porsche built in this interesting feature to piwis ii - they planned on discontinuing use of it around 2018, so the programming features of the software won't work if your windows system date is set to anything after that time....or so I have been told... Sent from my POCOPHONE F1 using Tapatalk __________________ 2000 Box Base, Renegade Stage 1 performance mods complete, more to come When the owners manual says that the laws of physics can't be broken by this car, I took it as a challenge... Last edited by ike84; 05-27-2021 at 06:19 PM.