i went to craig moates' site and now PROM programming is a little bit clearer to me now

now, what kinda laptop should i purchase? i cant afford much, so let me know what laptop will give me the most bang for my buck

(i am assuming i can use an older one that i can pick up for cheap used)

also where do i get the cable to connect the laptop to the ALDL?

anyway to make one myself

i wanna have a good grasp on this stuff before i get the ball rolling on my 350

 

You don't need an expensive laptop to run the scanning software, you can use any pentium 1 system and others are using old 486 systems. The 486's might have a tough time running the burning software in windows.
The only reccomendation I would give as a "must" is that you get a laptop with an Active Matrix LCD screen, these are much brighter and easier to see than a dual scan, passive matrix or HPA screen, those screens are almost impossible to see clearly if you aren't looking directly at the screen, they have almost no viewing angle. Most active matrix screens can be viewed at up to a 30 degree angle from dead center.

For the cable...look at Craig's site a bit more, he has schematics for several different cables you can make. I would suggest the 2 transistor cable, easy to build, costs about $8 in parts from raido shack.

 

ok thanx man

well, cant i run the burning software on my desktop PC (if i was to be frugal and buy a 486)?

 

ok didnt realize laptops were going for that cheap

i should definetly be able to get something wayyyyyyyy better than that with what i was planning on spending

 

Decide on a brand of laptop ( I went with Toshiba) and get a middle of the road pentium 1 ( I got a 120 mhz one, $50). This way if something happens to it ( slides off the seat onto the floor, someone steals it out of your car if you leave it in there) You won't be out much money and it won't hurt so bad.

 

ok cool,


whats the best scan-tool software to get?


my 350 i am building is going to look something like this:
TPI (hopefully a better manifold though, stealth ram maybe)
10:1 hypers
ported 416 heads
and a unknown cam as of now maybe a ZZ3?

is this something i am going to be able to tackle?

the TPI setup is a 91 Speed Density so i will be running the respective ECM


i guess tuner cat is the best programming software to get?

i already have WinBin and i cant figure that out to save my life

thanx

 

I would use Craig Moates' software for scanning it has some very nice features and he updates it pretty often.

For editing bin files I use Winbin (I like free), for me it was easy enough to understand and figure out what I was manipulating in it. I don't know if Tunercat would be any easier to understand, since I have never used it, but I would imagine it looks and operates kind of like Winbin (anyone know for sure?).