Club 80-90 Forums

Jes, a different line of thought....

As you probably know (?) I'm a fervent mac evangelist and as such I decided to buy a netbook to use in the van. Now being a Mac person this might seem strange, however my reason were:

1- I can't afford for my Mac book pro to get stolen.
2- I'd rather not run a partition with XP on it, I've done it before and it uses a chunk of memory and its a bit of a faf.
3- at £200 a netbook is expendable so can live in the van permanently.
4- most netbooks having a small 13" screen it's an ideal size to sit on the dash ( mine velcro's to the dash) and run memorymap.
5-some (not all) netbooks can be run direct from 12v. Mine is 18v but I just run it off a small inverter.

Why not just get a £15 laptop off ebay which will run WinXP and it won't matter if trashed/stolen in the van, you don't need a high spec to run vagcom and the like. Run laptops off a 12v to Xv dc-dc converter rather than an inverter. (only £10 - far cheaper than an inverter and less power loss going 12v - 230v - 18v etc.)

. Run laptops off a 12v to Xv dc-dc converter rather than an inverter

That sounds interesting, I've always just used the inverter because its there and I've got a 240 lead for it.

Do you have a link for the dc-dc converter?

Yep, just been given an old Sony laptop so will get that up and running

I wouldnt recommend using a crack for various reasons not least of which are that it leaves you open to Malware and viruses.As stated the VCDS version will do most things for $99 . You can buy a cheap calendar from ebay then work on most cars up til 2003 and which should cover most of our requirements. I bought my version for $149 nearly ten years ago and I have been supported by Ross Tech throughout despite not buying their lead. This has allowed me to do various code resets on Skoda, Seat and VW's I have owned , as well as giving me the heads up when the car goes to mechanics. Last night for example I was able to reset the brake pedal switch implausible code which had brough on the EPC light in my Seat Leon 1. I had to clean up the switch contacts first to clear the issue which threw up the code.

anyone able to talk me through whats required for an entry levelish fault reading etc set up. I now have an old laptop at my disposal, i need a cheap lead from ebay and download the ross tech lite?? is it then a case of plug and play? cheers

Hello,

it depends a bit on the windows version, but one thing you will have to do is go to device manager (through control panel in XP), go to the "ports" icon, and with the cable plugged in and the software installed it should say something like "usb serial port". If you double click this, then you should be able to find a setting which allows you to choose the com port number. I usually use COM3 - if you then go into VCDS - in the options screen, you can tell it which port to use - use whatever you selected here and the software should then find your cable and be able to communicate properly.

Windows 7 can be tricky with some cables I believe - if you let us know your windows version that'd be helpful. Hopefully it should work fairly easily.

Ewen

ewenmaclean wrote: Windows 7 can be tricky with some cables I believe - if you let us know your windows version that'd be helpful. Hopefully it should work fairly easily.

Ewen

That's interesting to know.
My system works sometimes and sometimes not - comm problems.
I'm using an EEE netbook, W7 ultimate, an el cheapo usb cable and VCDS.

I may try an XP install.

Hello,

I'm sorry I'm no expert on this - I usually use Linux, but for this I use XP as it seems to work ok. I'm pretty sure you need to be running 32 bit OS, but even then it can be a bit tricky - you do still definitely need to tell the device manager you want a port number from 1-4 for the usb serial port - for some reason this is defaulted to 5, but vcds needs a number from 1-4.

Ewen

will fire up this lap top and report back......somehow thinking that i am slowly drifting out of my depth......

I also am a linux (mint) user but have this netbook just for the bus OBD needs.

Ok the sharan AVG etdi project looks like it might be a goer so would like to sort the fault code reading thing now .... The Sony laptop I was given is not going to do it for me because it does not have built in wifi and I want to use it in my garage rather than carting it to and fro. I like the idea of a cheap netbook , plenty of used good ones on eBay as people move towards tablets I guess. What should I look for ? If I buy a cheap lead will it plug into a netbook?

When I read the codes on the sharan yesterday using a brand new Snap on set up we had to use lead 97 ( might have been 95) I think - basically we had to swap a few leads until it read so can someone point me to a cheap lead that will work , I'll find a netbook that running say xp? And then pay for the Ross tech lite . Then I am up and running

As long as the netbook has a USB port it should be fine.
I use an old Eeeepc that I picked up for 100 yoyos.

^ WHS.

I also use a netbook for in-van computing (ODB software inc $99 VCDS-Lite), Memory-Map etc. Cable was an Ebay cheapie such as current item 'VAG GROUP USB OBD2 II KKL ECU DIAGNOSTIC CABLE LEAD Compatible VCDS-LITE or 409 '.

HTH