Diagnostic Hardware what to buy.

Have a look on the BBS site under kits .You will find a Single vehicle (vin no.) for the P38 which lists all the supplied items to enable use on your vehicle.

not quite wot i was looking for, John - but thanks .

Does this help.?

it does (and doesnt) - yup - that a serial port null modem cable .

Ta.

PM sent MHM
:behindsofa:

received thanks :doh:

ive been keeping tabs on this thread as getting some diagnostics is something i have just started to think about. im not quite ready to take the plunge just yet as ive only had to have mine plugged in just the once(touch wood!!!!).

The only question i have at the moment for anyone is: currently i have an old laptop which i use for the EAS and i keep RAVE on there, ive cleared all the programs off the laptop which i dont need to keep it running a bit faster, but after reading this thread what id like to know is if i was to be using the faultmate combined with the laptop is there any certain spec the laptop needs to have to run efficently?

Thanks for any comments guys.

Tommo I run mine on an Acer netbook running XP (which I think the Faultmate prefers). I'm only up the road in Panfield your more than welcome to pop over for a look.

Steve

The Software runs on Windows 95, 97, 2000/ME and XP a treat. It's not so keen on Vista from what I have seen on the BBS forum, but does run. Windows 7 I'm not so sure about but it should run in capability mode ok.
I run mine on Win ME and XP..don't have any problems.

i went down to yam yam, to have a look at how it all works. but the guy left me out side his house, throwing cold water at me, and a load of abuse..

All yo woz interested in woz eatin all the Jammie Dodgers and slagging poor old Mikepolly and myself off.
:hysterically_laughi

piggysteve said:

Tommo I run mine on an Acer netbook running XP (which I think the Faultmate prefers). I'm only up the road in Panfield your more than welcome to pop over for a look.

Steve

Click to expand...

thanks for the offer steve, prob take you up on it when a fault appears!!!!

thanks for the input both steve and irish, the laptop i'd prob dedicate to the p38 is running xp so should be ok if and when i take the plunge.

thanks again.

How about this for you guys with an I-phone - a noo toy?

Couple of points to add my 2C's worth.

First Regarding installing and running our vehicle explorer software on Vista and Windows 7
The software does install and run very nicely, i use it on both myself, However unless we pay a kings ransom to Microsoft, so that the OS's automatically approve our software. Which on principle alone we won't, it requires the user to manually set approval permissions for our software themselves.

Although this is quite easy, and there is a whole host of help and advice from other owners posted on the Blackbox forums, with detailed how to's. There are of course always going to be the odd user out there who may still lack suffient computer skills to do this.
As a company, we do not feel that it is really up to us to provide support and tuition for using and modifying Microsofts products to suit ours, and as such our policy is to not list either OS as supported by us or our products.

Processor wise, we do run on stuff as low as 266 mhz, but this does run a little bit slower than can be achieved on 4/500mhz up. After that there is little performance increase at all, even if you use a 3 GHZ PC as the Comms to the vehicle come into play much more.


Second : Serial ports & Null modem cable.
The serial port is a quickly disappearing thing on modern PC's ' laptops, and we are often criticized for not going over to USB.
However the reality is that most equipment using USB, especially diagnostic equipment, does so only by virtue of fitting an FTDI USB to serial chip in their hardware and using a driver at the PC end that provides a virtual serial port. Thus replicating exactly what you get if you add a USB to serial adaptor cable in line with our null modem cable.

Aesthetically this is more simple, and more pleasing to the eye, but cost wise it simply adds the cost of the convertor chip into the hardware, rather than that cost being attached to the lead and optional, and it prevents the use of any PC not equipped with a USB port. It also tends to slow comms down a bit as serial data has to be packeted and framed to transport over USB and some USB to serial adaptors have little buffereing memory, meaning the software has to then accomodate these additional delays making them overall slower and more prone to data loss. In our case we added a USB setting for this.

MHM:
There is some nice OBDII stuff coming on the market, but we aint exactly lounging around getting sun tanned. In fact some stuff we have been working on for over a year already is pretty mind blowing and futuristic.

Those following the latest FCR news updates will know that we have just finished including all P38 systems on our FCR and while we are waiting for the hardware interace development to catch up, we have begun making it so that the FCR's functionality can also be achieved while it is connected to a PC as well.