Importing binaries

Importing brings a ROM image — a read from a programming tool or a dump file — into a collection so you can work on it. (Tuning Editor edits the file; reading from and writing to the ECU is done with your own tool.) Open it from Collections › Import › Import Binary (Ctrl+Shift+B).

Figure 1

Supported formats

Three formats are built in: raw BIN (.bin), Intel HEX (.hex) and Motorola S-record (.s19, .s28, .s37, .srec, .s). Installed I/O plugins can add more, and they then appear in the file picker alongside the built-in ones.

How a file is read

A raw .bin is taken byte-for-byte. A text format (HEX or S-record) stores data as address records, so Tuning Editor parses it into one contiguous image: it takes the lowest address as the base address and fills any gaps with 0xFF (the usual erased-flash value), reporting how many gaps were filled. A file with an implausibly large gap (more than 16 MB) is rejected rather than turned into a huge sparse image.

Note — a known .hex or S-record extension is trusted as text. For a .bin (or unknown extension) the first record is validated structurally, so a raw image that merely happens to begin with “:” or “S” is still read as raw bytes, not mis-parsed.

Choosing where it lands

After the file is read, a dialog asks where the bytes should go. The detected format and base address are shown at the top, and you have up to three choices:

Add a new section — create a fresh section for the image. You set a name, an optional function tag, a read offset (bytes to skip into the buffer — almost always 0), a display/base offset (the memory base address, pre-filled from a parsed HEX/S-record) and an initial length (leave 0 to size it automatically). This is the only option when the collection has no sections yet.
Replace the binary in an existing section — pick the section from a list (it defaults to the active one). Use this to refresh a section with a corrected read of the same image.
Add as a new version of an existing section — keep the section’s current versions and add this image as another, with its own name.

Tip — importing a tune next to its stock read? Add it as a new version so the original stays intact, then compare the two (see comparing & navigating files).

With or without a collection open

Import Binary works whether or not a collection is active: if none is open, importing creates a fresh one to hold the image. To bring in many files at once, use batch import instead.