Shooter63
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| posted on 31/1/17 at 07:19 PM |
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Megajolt connection problem
Can any of you guys tell me what I need to connect a megajolt up to a laptop, from what I've read you need some sort of weird adapter.
Shooter
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theduck
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| posted on 31/1/17 at 07:51 PM |
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I assume megajolt uses a serial connector the same as megasquirt? If so, you want a rs232 to USB adaptor that uses the ftdi chipset. Lots on Amazon
and similar for around £10-15
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David Jenkins
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| posted on 31/1/17 at 10:06 PM |
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It's worth looking on the megajolt website & forum about RS232 adaptors -
here - many are just cheap rubbish that don't follow the rules.
I have an old-fashioned laptop that has a proper 9-pin RS232 port, and I'm going to keep that as long as I have the car!
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chris
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| posted on 31/1/17 at 10:49 PM |
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i just bought the one from trigger wheels
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r1_pete
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| posted on 31/1/17 at 11:18 PM |
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As above, get an ftdi chipset adapter from a reliable supplier and you'll be fine.
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mcerd1
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| posted on 1/2/17 at 08:51 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by David Jenkins
It's worth looking on the megajolt website & forum about RS232 adaptors -
here - many are just cheap rubbish that don't follow the rules.
I have an old-fashioned laptop that has a proper 9-pin RS232 port, and I'm going to keep that as long as I have the car!
^^ what he said - the problem comes from cheap nasty adaptors that don't offer the full functionality for the serial port
you can avoid the whole issue if you get any computer with a real serial port
an old laptop is ideal - I got an old toughbook from someone on here just as a garage laptop
the battery is dead but runs of the mains or a cheap 12v power adaptor and has serial and USB ports which makes it perfect - no need to worry about
damaging an expensive one 
or lots of desktops still have one internally - just needs one of these:
linky
often the MB comes with the cable in the box (I'm sure I've got a few somewhere in my big pile of spares)
[Edited on 1/2/2017 by mcerd1]
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Irony
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| posted on 1/2/17 at 11:28 AM |
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I bought a old laptop from a car boot for a £5. Reset windows XP to factory settings and I only use it for Megajolt! Perfect!
I actually screwed up majorly whilst tuning, I was backing the car out of the driveway and the laptop cable caught the propshaft and it the resultant
calamity flung the laptop across the garage/garden and it landed on grass about twenty foot away. The force chopped the 240v cable in two like
butter. Laptop is however still going strong.
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Shooter63
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| posted on 1/2/17 at 09:13 PM |
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Thanks lads for all the replies, I think the 1st thing I will do is find an old laptop with the correct ports etc, just to make things easier
Shooter
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mcerd1
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| posted on 2/2/17 at 10:11 AM |
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Laptops running XP or windows 2000 are reasonable bet, they should have USB ports and maybe even wi-fi to make transferring files onto them easy
but you can get PCMICA expansion cards with wi-fi / USB etc if need be... (assuming it will at least have a PCMICA slot)
quote:
Originally posted by Irony
I actually screwed up majorly whilst tuning, I was backing the car out of the driveway and the laptop cable caught the propshaft and it the resultant
calamity flung the laptop across the garage/garden and it landed on grass about twenty foot away. The force chopped the 240v cable in two like
butter. Laptop is however still going strong.
I was thinking that on old laptop was a good idea in case it got dropped or a tool got dropped on it - I never thought about accidentally turning
it into a missile 
[Edited on 2/2/2017 by mcerd1]
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