You know, I would love to know how Programa has figured out this circuit board.
I have tried contacting Siemens VDO, and they've told me to f!@#k off in not so many words.
That circuit board is amazing. Believe it or not theres an NEC 4-bit microprocessor on board. It actually takes in a voltage, passes it through a ADC, then to the NEC, then does some sort of calculation before converting it back to analog, splitting it up into 4 seperate signals, each representing 1 of 4 quadrants of the guage. All quadrants are ground to Vdd, except the first which is Vdd to ground. And then drive the guages in 4 stages.
And American guages have one wire. Hmmmmmm...
There are severall different voltage sources, mixtures of analog and digital signals, redundant circuits, transistors as amplifiers and transistors as switches. Obsolete components, components working in their breakdown regions.
I can
guarentee you that they have not figured out this board on their own. Either they have a contrract with VDO and have a copy of the schematics, have found a cache of new boards somewhere, or plain made up their own boards. I believe the latter one...because its also my idea!
Tobias would you be willing to take yours apart for a little photo? I am consumed with curiosity!