I saw this at work and thought what you were thinking of attempting was cool, then kinda silly, then foolish, and now I believe it's downright stupid and dangerous. The reason I'm being a bit stern is because I work on the software for EECs or Electronic Engine Controls for high-bypass turbofan engines (airplane engines) which is essentially the same basic concept behind an ECU or Engine Control Unit but for an internal combustion engine (car engine). While we have to worry a lot more about fine tuning our engines to comply with FAA regs and Customer Efficency ratings, we also have to worry about one more thing, SAFETY.
In order to even attempt to reengineer a stock chip you'll need some expensive equipment, a logic analyzer as well as some hook up to Flash the chip or write to the chip as others have already mentioned. Why is this a bad idea? Because put simply even though there is info on how to write ur own code to improve performance on those chips, what that code is missing is all of the safety features and redundant algorithms to prevent the engine from damaging itself and in the end YOU.
Let me elaborate a little, FIRST of all there is certain info that is required as you have already mentioned in order to be run or else the engine will use failsafe settings to allow functionallity but at greatly reduced performance. The failsafes are unchangeable as they provided the last defense against major computer failure of your onboard systems. The next thing is how you write ur updates to the ECU, you see, in aircraft engines there are seperate parts of the software downloaded at different stages, if you don't dl them in the right order or integrate them properly it renders the control useless. I don't know for sure if car engines do this, but all of the principles are the same. More importantly though, if you do not know the update rate of the computer that uses the ECU's controlled values, you may write code that would not update fast enough or too fast which could lead to impropper timings and damage ur chip, computer, and ur engine. Further, If when you rewrite the code, it is not properly integrated into the rest of the code (or if you just flash the damn thing not knowing what you're doing with new hand code) your comp may not be able to even use the crap u put in the ECU and will again default to failsafe values.
SECOND, if for example you sucessfully rewrote ur chip and the new effects seem to boost performance, you would have no real idea what kind of damage ur doing to ur engine. We test constantly how minor changes to NON-VARIABLE values in the scheduling of how our engine's control affects performance, why?, because we CAN make our engine run 10% more efficently or run 30% faster, BUT the PHYSICAL DESIGN LIMITS OF THE ENGINE ARE ALMOST ALWAYS COMPROMISED. We see this in the form of burst disks, rotar rub, case cracking, you name it we do it, why?, so that using the product won't cause mechanical failures or in extreme cases human injury when it rolls off the assembly line.
THIRD, Every time you change the specs for your engine in the form of software upgrades in order to improve the mechanical shortcomings of the device you introduce a very high level of uncertanty and therefore instabillity. If you were to change certain timings and pressure ratios without knowing EXACTLY how the 2 or 3 or 4 or 20 different controlled values DEPEND on one another, i.e. knowing the logic AND the Physical Design limits of your engine in order to maxamize performance but keep the engine from ending up scattered all over the ground and you, then what you are doing is like trying to do is outguess an engineer who knows the control and engine like the back of his/her hand how to improve the performance. And remember you need to know HOW performance is affected in real life after you modify the "theoretical" benefits of the software
While what you are thinking of attempting sounds cool, it could also be hazardous and in the long run costly and inefficent. I would reccomend just doing some research on upgrade performance ECU chips and buy the one that suits your car (that has been tested and certified so if your engine blows, they're responsible and you're not dead).
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