I have a D15B7 turbo with a chipped OBD1 ECU. This chip had a tune for its turbo around 4-10 years ago (Before I owned the car). I'm now going to be running a different: turbo, intake and exhaust (those are the only modifications done to the engine), so I doubt the tune will act the same. I plan to connect my laptop to my ECU through a datalogging port and start it up to figure out what tune it's running, then modify the tune on the chip until Its in a safe range.
I still need to check the wastegate pressure, Im going to set it to around 7psi.
Im not sure what turbo this car had before, but now I am going to be running a t3/t4 .63 turbo
I'm new to tuning so I'm learning along the way. There aren't any shops or people near me that still do chipped ECUs, so Im gonna have to tune it with a friend
Im connecting everything back to the engine, would starting it up to see what tune it has be considered safe?
Sorry if it sounds dumb, Im a newbie.

 

You don't need to run the motor to pull the tune. If the tune is stored on a chip, you have to physically pull the chip and read it with an EEPROM reader, like the one you were looking for in the other thread. You will not be able to download the tune through the datalog port. Only monitor real time data.

I feel I should mention, the datalog port on the ECU is a 1 way street. You can only listen to the data stream through that port. A Hondata or Neptune RTP board is just a chip emulator and a datalogger built into 1 board. Bridging both devices into 1 usb port. Back in the day you would use a Moates Hulog and a Moates Ostrich to do the same thing.

Ideally you want to get away from burning chips or it will make the tuning process cumbersome especially for a first timer. Real time tuning can only be done with a chip emulator. RTP means real time programming, which means chip emulator. Then once you start the motor, you can make changes in real time. Imagine you start the motor, and it's lean. So you add some fuel in the lower RPMs, burn a chip, and start it. It's closer but not right. So you do it again. Better. Now you rev it up a little bit. Dang, lean again. Burn the chip again. See how this can get tiresome quick?

With an emulator, you can add some fuel to an area of the table and immediately see those changes affect the motor. You can tune a motor from scratch in 30 minutes instead of 3 hours. Doing a pull, and burning a chip on the side of the road is no fun. Risking broken pins on your chip is no fun from removal and install over and over again. Having a chip not make good contact throwing your ECU into limp-home-mode is no fun because you wore out the socket or pins installing over and over.

You want to make sure you have a wideband o2 sensor installed or you're flying blind, you can't actually tune anything without a wideband.

If you're still set on chips or emulators, for software, you want to use HTS, honda tuning suite, as it's the most mature free honda tuning software out there.

Incase you are considering, I don't recommend spending money on Hondata or Neptune. Hondata retails for $590 now. You can get a standalone like FT450 or Haltech 550 for $900 retail, and they would be much much better to learn with.