Turbo Drifter,
Sweet on the ViPec! Where'd you buy it? Seems to me there is a dealer in Calgary or something? I am thinking of upgrading to ViPec over the winter.
As for me I currently run Megasquirt 'n'spark. V3 board with hi-res code.
60-2 crank trigger, distributorless coil on plug.
Motor is a '99 Volvo S80 T6 engine (2.8L, 24v Turbo) swapped into my '83 Volvo 240 -so yeah standalone was kinda necessary.
It works great, if you plan to wire and tune your EMS yourself, megasquirt is great because as was said, there is a lot of community support.
What are the limitations?
Well, only 2 injector outputs. So I run batch fire on my 6 cylinder. three 50lb injectors firing at the same time sucks. It's noisy as hell.
No per-cylinder fuel or timing trims.
not much for freely configurable inputs and outputs.
Dwell is only compensated by battery voltage, so you have limited control over spark dwell which I find annoying.
The d-sub connector is uses for the harness is just that- a f'ing printer port connector.
Megasquirt 2 has a few more features but nothing major IMO.
VEMS is supposedly very good- it is loosely megasquirt based and fairly cheap but uses automotive grade connectors and has more inputs and outputs. The documentation for it is a disaster though. Good upgrade for someone who is familiar with megasquirt, but the learning curve would be steep for a first timer I think.