My wife found a pretty cool little laptop today at a garage sale...$25 for a Toshiba laptop with a 2GB HDD and 8MB memory. It is running Win 3.1...talk about ancient. I was wondering if there was an older version of WinALDL that will work with Win 3.1. The thing won't take Win 98...haven't tried Win 95 yet. I may do that tomorrow if I can find an old copy of it sonewhere. Does anyone know if WinALDL will work with that version of Windows? If not, it looks like I may be making a trip to the computer junkyard to look for a 16MB memory card for it.

 

I can send you a zipped copy of win95 if you like.

Hit me up on AIM:BadBlue91RS or Yahoo:BadBlue91RS
And 8mb of memory should be enough to run win95 and WinALDL, but thats all.


:lala:
Josh

 

What model of Toshiba is it? I deal in used Toshiba laptops and may be able to help.

For scanning I use a Tecra 500CDT (P1 120) and win 98 runs on it just fine.

 

Toshiba Satellite (1993-1995 vintage) T2100. It works great when it has AC power, but the battery isn't worth a crap. I hope I can find another battery for it.
BadBlue, I'll take Qin 95 if youy have it. I don't have AIM, but I have MSN Messenger. I guess I could download AIM.
Thanks for the help guys.

 

Heh, ok. 486 DX2 50mhz. It will run win 95 but you may need to flash the BIOS.
It had 4mb of RAM (CS) or 8 (CT) from the factory. I would get a 32mb card for it (E bay). It will use EDO memory on a Toshiba specific card. 32mb is the largest card they list for it.

Check here for what all Toshiba has for it.

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...ceghdgngdglk.0

 

Just got the Win95 flash and the CMOS upgrade flash too. It'll be done in a minute. Then I need to get the memory and Win95. I already have the WinALDL and WinBin. I built my own ALDL cable too.
I was using TunerPro RT, but it quit working on my computer this morning for some strange reason. It will start, but that's all it will do. It sits on the WinXP Start bar and won't restore or anything...nada, zip, nothing. That's why I downloaded WinBin.

 

you have mail!!!

 

Okay...update on the little laptop
I flashed the BIOS with the Win95 updates and the new Y2K compliant CMOS (now THERE'S a term that I haven't heard in a while...Y2K compliant). It all seems to work fine. I just need to get a copy of Win95. I think my sis-in-law may have it. We'll see. If so, I am gonna install a bare-bones Win95 environment to see if I can get it all hooked up to my Jeep's new EFI system. I mean nothing else will be installed on this system...no TSR's, no games, no Word or WP, nothing except Win95, WinALDL and MAYBE PAnalyzer.
The battery in the new laptop is a POS. I have heard horror stories on here about running a laptop off the cig lighter and then having a half-full PROM not start the engine after it dies and the laptop loses power. My cig lighter is powered straight off the battery, so it won't lose power if the engine dies. How large of an inverter should I get to run this laptop? Will a 600W inverter be enough or should I get a 1200W inverter? (I guess this is why people burn "carry chips"...just in case...)

 

A 600W will be more than enough for a laptop.

 

What version did this to you? This shouldn't be happening anymore.

Anyway, go to the TUnerPro install directory and delete "TunerProSettings.dat". Then restart TunerPro.

 

The newest version of RT did it. I just downloaded it about 2 weeks ago. I uninstalled the whole thing, deleted the folder (with the exception of my ECU and BINS folders) and reinstalled the program. It works fine now. I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like TunerPro RT...I think it is a really good piece of work. In my limited experience with this field of automotive work, that program is the grand-daddy of them all as far as I am concerned. I was just kinda frustrated that it worked one minute and the next minute...nothing... If it weren't for software like that, idiots like me would be forced to drive with carb'd engines.
If it happens again, all I have to do is delete that .dat file? Cool. I didn't want to do that in the first place because I was afraid that it would render the whole thing useless.
I am planning to get some more memory for that little laptop. It will probably be dedicated to the Jeep engine tuning and diagnostics, meaning it will live in my tool room and ride in the Jeep with me for about a month once I get the whole thing up and running....maybe this week if all turns out well. I may just install all of the engine stuff on it (Tuner Pro RT, WinALDL, PAnalyzer, etc.) on it and that can be my Jeep computer. For $25, I think my wife got a pretty good deal...we couldn't find one in a pawn shop anywhere for less than about $300.
Now...if that PROMinator thingy was just ready to order and ship...hmmmm....

 

Hit another snag...I just hooked the homemade ALDL cable to the new laptop and tested the voltage between the leads...7.87 VDC peak voltage. It bounces down to about 7.50 VDC and back up to 7.75-7.87 VDC. I am guessing that this means I will have to redo my ALDL cable to use a 12 VDC external power source. No problem. I can just clip the resistor out of P4 on the serial connector and solder in a wire to hook to a batt feed with a 5-amp fuse inline.

 

I haven't had any problem using the serial port power except when I run the laptop on the pwr inverter and the battery is charging on the laptop. For some reason it will send my data count down to 0-7 and blink red instead of green. If I unplug the pwr cord from the laptop it will return to green/20.


I have also been playing with the USB to serial cable on XP and win98. I still can not get them to assign a fixed seial port.
The serial port is 1 and my pcmcia to serial adapter will assign port 3. But the usb will not assign a port just says its serial/lpt.
Has anyone got it to work yet?
Also the pcmcia card I have will not run under XP.


The pcmcia works fine and I can use winaldl on the serial port and tunerpro or tunercat on the pcmcia/serial port at the same time with the romulator so I can do real time tuning with no chip burning.

 

I have PCMCIA slots on this little laptop. I could easily pull one of the cards out (probably the modem) and replace it with another serial port card. That way, I could eventually do the same thing Bill usn-1 is talking about...using the AutoPROM and WinALDL in consortia, I could do real time tuning...on-the-fly tuning in a Jeep!!! What a concept!!! :lala:

 

What do you mean by this? Isn't there supposed to be a 12VDC source going IN to the interface cable? I did a little math and came up with a 0.41amp current flow to drop the voltage on my cable from 12VDC to 7.87VDC between the GND and the Data wires. Does this sound about right?

 

I use a pwr inverter in my cig lighter to plug the laptop into while I drive and tune.
If my laptop battery is low when I plug it in to the inverter I cannot read any winaldl data on the laptop.
in winaldl there is a small window in the top center that will blink red or green and for the 7747 will display 20.
When I plug in the laptop and it is drawing a load, the window is red and the data count is 0-7.
If I unplug the laptop from the inverter it will go back to green/20.
As long as the batt in the laptop is full, I have no trouble.

I don't run the seperate pwr source to my aldl cable. It is pwr'd from the serial port.

 

Great...my laptop has a B/W monochrome display. Now I know what it feels like to be red-green color blind

So is the system logging data with this data count or is it getting garbage out of the serial port?

Interesting. Maybe the internals of your laptop are diverting current to the battery charger.

Mine is built this way too, but it is beginning to look like I may have to use the external power source with mine unless I can figure out how to get a little more juice out of the laptop's serial port.

 

you should read my posts here about PCMCIA and USB adapters

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=194677

 

I read that thread last night and replied to it then too. Cool thread. I also downloaded that PDF from Outlaw Performance that described the PCMCIA serial cards. There is a place here in Rockport that has all sorts of laptop knick knacks...they may just have that very card. I'll check tomorrow because it would be really cool to have TWO serial ports on this laptop...for obvious reasons.

 

I can tell you that for what its worth the radio shack usb to serial "does" assign a com port. Im taking mine back to get my $50? back.

 

Thanks,
I read the post a while ago and have been following it.
It does not appear anyone has a definate answer the the USB port discussion.
One guy said he got it to work but someone else configured it for him.
There has to be some windows guru's on here that can come up with the port assignment answer!!!

Is there something else on usb's I missed?

 

Are you saying your USB to serial assigned a port number but it still did not work???
I saw your screen shot of the pcmcia.

Thanks

 

Seems like you would WANT it to assign a COM port so that your software (WinALDL, etc) could communicate with whatever is connected on the other end of the cable. All it sounds like to me is that you want to make the computer THINK that whatever is connected on the other end is a USB device. That's easy. I did it with a serial to USB adapter I bought at Best Buy. It wasn't for an automotive application...it was for connection a water quality datalogger (datasonde) that had a serial comms protocol to a PDA that used USB I/O exclusively. I hooked the cable up to the I/O port of the Compaq PDA and PRESTO...instant datafeed through the WinCE version of HyperTerminal.

 

yes but Im not using winALDL is it free?

the Motes is and its the one that wont work. It acted the same with the radio shack adapter as it did with the PCMCIA adapter(screen shots)

 

Yes, WinALDL is free. Do a web search or go to this site to download it:
http://www.winaldl.webhop.net
It is REALLY small (about 450K) and shouldn't take more than about 3 minutes to download on a dial up at 28.8K conxn speed.

 

ahh I see it doesnt support the 730 ecm? I looked at the list of supported ECMs

 

Same reason I am not using the Freescan software. It doesn't support my ECM (8746) or any other TBI ECM for that matter.

 

http://www.winaldl.webhop.net/

It's free but you have a 730 ecm which is 8192 baud right?
I am running 160 baud ecm's so the winaldl won't work for you.
AFAIK.
EDIT you guys type fast!!!!

But even so the question is....

Has anyone got an USB to serial cable to log data, or drive a romulator?

IIRC tunercat will support up to 8 com ports.
tunerpro and winaldl will only support up to #4 com port.
And none give an option for lpt or parallel or USB ports.

So if someone buys a laptop with no serial port, he has to buy pcmcia to serial adapters and run win98.

Is there anyone else running anything succesfully on a 160 baud ECM?

Thanks.

 

Like I said, I have done it with a water quality instrument, but NOT in an automotive application. It wasn't even SUPPOSED to work with the water quality instrument and the PDA. The datasonde manufacturers said it wouldn't work, but they sent me a copy of their serial comms protocol commands anyway. I guess it was kind of a slap in the face when I sent them pictures of my array of adapters and cables that made it all work...
Yes, IMO, it can in fact be done.

 

So if I read you right, you used it with a PDA running wince but not on a laptop.

I agree it should be able to work.
I'm just trying to find out if anyone has got it to work with a 160 baud ecm and software.

I have a system that works for me now but what about the guys who buy a new laptop that does not have a serial port?

It would be nice to have option other than a pcmcia adapter.

 

Nope...didn't need to do it with the laptop cause the laptop I had (Dell) already had a serial port. We didn't need PCMCIA adapters for that application.
Now, the WinCE thing worked, but I honestly couldn't tell you why it worked when it shouldn't have...but it did. I got raw streaming data from that datasonde in the WinCE environment using a forced HyperTerminal connection and a dummy phone number. With all of the stuff that I did that was WRONG, the whole thing shouldn't have worked at all...but it did. The manufacturer's rep was there with me when I pulled the whole contraption idea out of my butt...he was the one that took pictures and sent them to his headquarters in Oregon. All we did was get the USB cable that came with the PDA, stick a USB to serial adapter on the end of it, and then we put a gender changer on the end of THAT part...hooked it up to the datasonde and typed a CTRL-Q (to wake the instrument), then a CTRL-D to start streaming datalines...and it worked. The data we got was RAW data, but after some parsing and cleanup, it was usable.
As for the guys that have only USB ports and no TRUE serial comms capability, well, they may just be SOL unless they are willing to try the cable/adapter contraption I described above. It ain't cheap to do...the USB-to-serial adapter was expen$ive IIRC. The great State of Texas paid for all of it...not me. If I'd had to pay for it, trust me, it wouldn't have gotten done. I am thinking if guys with USB-only would just plug up the adapter chain I made and somehow assign a COM port # to that particular USB port, they should be able to get a datastream. I guess I'd call it a "pseudo-emulation" of a serial port using USB...USB does, after all, stand for "Universal Serial Bus"...you'd think that the word SERIAL would pretty much retain the same operability between the two.
Now that I REALLY think about it, I am wondering if my adapter chain might work in the REVERSE...going from a USB device to a 9-pin (DB-9) serial port. That might even be worth some experimentation. AFAICT, older PDA's do it all the time with a USB to serial cable. There may be something in the driver codes (or even in that Microsoft linking software that comes with the PDA) that converts the datastream to something usable.
EDIT--> Update on the laptop project. I have a copy of Win 95 on the way as I type this. My bro-in-law found it for me a few minutes ago and the wife is on the way home with it. I sure hope that it will install considering that I only have 8MB of onboard memory. I am thinking that it will. I'll let you guys know how it works out when I get it running and do the initial hookup to the Jeep's ALDL port.