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Emerald M3D software and laptop help
Trev Borg - 28/9/11 at 02:00 PM

I have just bought a Midtec Spyder with Emerald M3D ecu.

I also got a old laptop with it so I could communicate with it.

Unfortunately the cmos battery is dead and I can not even change the date and time through the bios settings so it looks like the PC is screwed.

Si, in order to commutate with M3D, what do I need?

I assume a laptop with serial port!

what OS?

any particular spec (very low I assume).

The I take it I can just download the software required from emerald!

zekill - 28/9/11 at 02:05 PM

Hi,
you can use any laptop with USB ports and buy a USB to serial port adapter.

Normally a dead bios battery is not a problem to use your old laptop.

Trev Borg - 28/9/11 at 02:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by zekill
Hi,
you can use any laptop with USB ports and buy a USB to serial port adapter.

Normally a dead bios battery is not a problem to use your old laptop.


I taken it bits and can not even find the battery.

That's not really the problem, as you could even get round this by resetting the date every time you use it.

The main problem is that it does not let me change the date and time in the bios settings. I can change every thing else, but if I go into the date / time menu, the thing freezes.

Does the emerald M3D work on all o/s system? I kinda thought it was limited to win 05 / 98!

ironside - 28/9/11 at 02:43 PM

Works fine on XP, I've never tried it on anything newer.

mcerd1 - 28/9/11 at 03:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Trev Borg
I taken it bits and can not even find the battery.

they can be hidden away on the other side of the MB - I took half my old one apart, only to find out that you could get to it with only 2 screws from the other side.....

it sounds like that might not be all thats wrong with it though and I'm guessing its very slow and old if your running win 95/98 - what make / model is it ?


or if you want a newer I'd look for something with win 2000 (or XP) - probably a pentium 2 / 3 or equivelent AMD
that way you won't need spend too much and it will likley still have a proper serial port (also win 2000 is very stable and doesn't use much memory/power to run)

[Edited on 28/9/2011 by mcerd1]

will121 - 28/9/11 at 06:10 PM

Emerald system runs ok on xp, and I've recently changed laptop to windows 7 and seems to be ok too, sure older systems will run it, have you looked on emeralds web site for info? Sure you can download software from there to or I can email a copy is it a k3 version of ecu? If running from a usb port get a quality adaptor or one direct from emerald as cheap ones renown to have problems

austin man - 28/9/11 at 07:40 PM

xp and a serial port adapter you do have to change the serial port to com 1 though in the emmerald software. Think it also works with Vista

stevebubs - 28/9/11 at 08:20 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ironside
Works fine on XP, I've never tried it on anything newer.


works fine on 2000 and Win7, too...

Trev Borg - 28/9/11 at 10:50 PM

Think the ecu is a very early one, the pc was running win 98.

When I tried getting the software off the emerald site, it said link was broken.

mcerd1 - 29/9/11 at 07:33 AM

a 32bit copy of win 2000 or XP will run 'almost' anything that win 98 can...

and if there is a problem you can always just stick a copy of 98 / 98SE on the machine instead

[Edited on 29/9/2011 by mcerd1]

metro6r4 - 8/10/11 at 09:18 PM

could you run it in compatibility mode if it wont run on a newer operating system have to admit that after i got mine mapped i never needed to touch it