hi all
i have megajolt fitted to my car, but i am unable to check if it is working correctly or to adjust it.
my laptop doesnt have the serial port required. i have tried usb adaptor but doesnt seem to work.
i have looked on ebay but there are loads of used laptops on there. too many to trawl through to see if they have serial port
can anyone give me name of one to search for or has anyone got one they no longer require
thanks
steve

Hi Steve.

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E7010 with an intel P4m processor... that has a serial port..

Pretty nice laptop actually.. I think it works but I would need to hunt out the power supply for it!

Link to one I had for sale

http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=164118

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Airedale-Computer-Recycling?_trksid=p4340.l2563
ive been considering a toughbook from here as they are so cheap. I am worried they are cheap for a reason tho

They're an incredibly low/ancient spec which explains the price - a Pentium 2 300MHZ CPU with 128mb of RAM is going to struggle doing pretty much anything to be honest. I've got a Compaq Armada M700 which cost me £20 from Ebay which has a Pentium 3 800MHZ CPU and 256MB of memory and that copes fine with Tunerstudio etc (for £20 it's actualy a lot better at a lot more things than you might expect...... it's dog slow by modern standards obviously but did I mention it was £20? lol)

[Edited on 13/6/12 by D Beddows]

i think the pictures and description tell you why they are cheap, saying that most of them probably still work.

My dell doesn't have a serial but the docking station for it does, incase you already had a laptop that is compatiable with docking stations.

The serial to usb converters that maplin sell work ok, you just need to make sure the laptop sees it as a serial port that can be set in the megajolt tuning software.I have an old dell inspirion that I use that has a serial port its a pentium 2 650 mhz with 256 meg ram and it copes with all my tuning software.
Paul

quote:

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Originally posted by Bigheppy
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Airedale-Computer-Recycling?_trksid=p4340.l2563
ive been considering a toughbook from here as they are so cheap. I am worried they are cheap for a reason tho

---

have a check that everything's set up right on your laptop first!

while i know there are some usb converters that have problems, I bought a Lindy one, and it works fine, and i have terrible luck!

plug it in to the usb port on you laptop, check in the device manager under com & LPT to see what com port its set itself to, then go into the megajolt configurator, and set the same com port in the tools-configurator options menu

i'd be surprised if it actually doesn't work.




something to also watch out for, i've only just noticed, my laptop has 3 usb ports, each one assigns the converter to a different com port, com 4, 5, or 6. of course megajolt won't recognise it if the converter is assigned to com 6, and MJ is set to look on com4 for example.

[Edited on 13/6/12 by blakep82]

thanks guys for the replies
gives me some models to look at. dont want to spend lots because it wont be used for anything else and probably only used couple of times a year i would imagine.
@blakep82, i have checked my com ports previously and was sure i set up correctly. i will check again
thanks
steve

I have an old Dell Inspiron 7500 that im keeping for my megasquirt

It was my main laptop until about 9 months ago, bit slow but bullet proof (If a little big).

Might be worth an ebay search, should only be about £20 ish now.