BTW, I don't agree with the assumption that the check engine light being on won't hurt anything. Your number one warning should another failure begin to occur would the the Check Engine light getting turned on. With the lamp already on, and obviously a hard code set you lose that warning because of course the light is already on. When the lamp is on, it means the car is suspected of polluting the air at least 1.5 times the FTP testing limit that the vehicle is certified to. The tendency for owners to ignore the lamp is the primary cause for active emissions testing in many states. Finally once the car noticeably runs bad and you finally decide to have it fixed, exactly where would you expect a technician to accurately start and stop the repair? You could have any number of active failures by then, and who knows how many blocked tests have failed to run because of the active failures. Replacing the PCM would not cost $1300 all by itself, what else did they say the car needed?