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Megajolt connection problem
Shooter63 - 31/1/17 at 07:19 PM

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

theduck - 31/1/17 at 07:51 PM

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

David Jenkins - 31/1/17 at 10:06 PM

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!

chris - 31/1/17 at 10:49 PM

i just bought the one from trigger wheels

r1_pete - 31/1/17 at 11:18 PM

As above, get an ftdi chipset adapter from a reliable supplier and you'll be fine.

mcerd1 - 1/2/17 at 08:51 AM

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]

Irony - 1/2/17 at 11:28 AM

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.

Shooter63 - 1/2/17 at 09:13 PM

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

mcerd1 - 2/2/17 at 10:11 AM

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]