Comment by dghlsakjg
23 days ago
You can still control a completely mechanical engine to work with set speeds. There are mechanical governors that can do this, or you can get an electronic component that moves the throttle for you. Fixed speed engines with variable load are much older than the transistor.
It is no harder than doing it with an ECU, except that you need to install a servo or speed governor with hand tools, instead of fiddling with ECU code.
It is far easier for 3rd party stuff to target say open bus protocol rather than a servo + speed sensor pair.
From a software perspective it’s the same. The software doesn’t care if it is telling a servo to rotate or an ECU to increase speed. Both systems need an external speed sensor feeding in. The only extra on the mechanical engine is adding a generic servo.
Both systems can use an open bus protocol. The mechanical system resists proprietary rent seeking as an added bonus.
We’re commenting on an article about farmers willing to pay for tractors with rebuilt all mechanical engines when the exact same tractor could be built with a new computer controlled one. That choice was intentional.