Unfortunately, my old laptop died a wet death. I bought a new conpaq today and it has every port you can imagine....except a 9 pin. I bough an adaptor to connect a 9 pin to a usb, but is that gonna work well or what? From what i have read, thats why the bs3 and fast come with the 9 pin, b/c it work better. I am going to try it obviously, but curious what you all are doing??

thanks
Lee

 

Guess I lucked out I got my laptop a little over a year ago. (then again, that was one of the things I was looking for when I bought it) There is a logical reason for using RS-232 (serial port) and that is the level of noise immunity it provides. RS-232 spec is +/-13V for the signal voltages, this is 26V from on to off. USB is 5V from on to off I believe. This means that in a noisy environment (a car for instance) the USB system is more susceptible to interference. The USB to serial adapters can and do work well, provided you have the right one. Some adapters don't use +/-13V, they use +/-5V. This lower level can cause data being sent to the ECM to be lost, and it won't link with the laptop software. Most PCMCIA serial cards shouldn't have this issue, and are probably preferred over the USB units. If your ECM's company (FAST, DFI etc) have a reccomended adapter I'd strongly reccomend buying it. It's not that they want you to pay more as they want you to get a compatible adapter.

 

well- i am sitting in the car as i type-- i bought a belkin serial to usb adaptor for $60. it was the most expensive one there and looked to be the most detailed piece i could find. at first, all the muners in the fuel and spark tables etc were 0 and the x and y axis numbers were way way off. after a few comport changes (5) i was able to get a good sync and get the numbers from the BS# to transfer to the computer. i have truned it on and off a few times and it seems to sync well and transfer data fine. that is... with the car not running and the ignition in the on position. i guess we will see what it does with it running if about an hour when i go make some data logs. I didnt see any technical information about voltage paramaters on the packages of usb/serial converters. perhaps ont he belkin site. i will email bs3 and see what they recvommend, but the bigstuff3.com website was off line all day yesterday. hope it comes back up soon.

thanks for the tech info that i certainly didnt know.
I do have a firewire connection available and a sd/ms/pro mmc xd slot available if the usb doesnt do the trick

thanks
Lee