Minimal laptop for VAGCOM?

Hello everyone,

Although I'm more of a PC and hardware enthusiast, I'm planning to buy a laptop and a VAGCOM device soon, so I can also access and adjust measurement values digitally.

For financial reasons, I'm looking for suitable used options.

My questions:

1. What are the minimum hardware and software requirements to reliably log all the measurements that the EDC provides at once (so that the laptop doesn't get overwhelmed by the data stream)?

2. (This is slightly off-topic, but in my opinion, it's important) Which batteries are recommended, or what should one look for when buying used devices? Replacement batteries, as far as I know, are quite expensive, especially for laptops.

Thank you for your advice.

The few bits per second that the serial port can handle can be processed by any PC capable of running Windows 95.

The control unit does not output the data simultaneously, but sequentially, meaning that it transmits data from each channel one after the other. That means the computer has enough time to process everything.

Recommendation: You can basically choose any brand that runs Windows. However, I would advise against Toshiba, as they tend to have issues with their ports; the wiring seems to be different. Also, I cannot recommend Gericom; their products break down quickly, and their customer hotline is a premium-rate number with a long waiting time where you're constantly disconnected. Recently, I paid 15 € for a phone call .

Battery problem: You're absolutely right. Batteries are expensive. I just bought a replacement for my old Gericom device: a bargain at €177. Otherwise, they cost €215. An alternative is a plug-in power adapter for the car.

Hi Ulf,

Regarding point 1, I can only agree with my predecessor. VAG-COM doesn't have particularly demanding hardware requirements; anything with around 16 MB of RAM and a clock speed of at least 120 MHz should work.

My laptop is a 400 MHz Celeron with 192 MB of RAM and runs Linux/Win2000. When running on battery power, I set it to 200 MHz, which is more than sufficient for VAG-COM under Win2000 (just as a reference for the clock speed).

It's still important to remember that upgrades are often very expensive, meaning that adding more RAM is either impossible or extremely costly for many devices. It's better if the device uses S0-DIMMs, as they are relatively affordable and standardized.

Regarding the batteries: This is a rather sad topic, especially with used laptops. They rarely last longer than 2 years, and, as you said, replacements are expensive. With older devices that use NiMH batteries, you can sometimes help yourself by disassembling them and replacing the cells with new ones from Conrad or a similar store. However, with Li-ion batteries, you have little chance of doing that. I think, in your situation, I would rather buy one of those €40 230-volt devices for the car (from Conrad); the battery condition doesn't matter (as they age, they hold less charge), and you can measure as much as you want . If you want to rely on something like that, make sure the computer can run without a battery... unfortunately, not all of them can! Some manufacturers save money on the power supplies by omitting the buffering circuitry and instead relying on the battery... This saves them a few cents, but makes operation without a battery or with a severely damaged battery impossible.

Best regards,

Jan.

Recommendation: You can basically choose any brand that runs Windows. Just avoid Toshiba. They are experiencing problems with the ports.


OBJECTION:

I am using a Toshiba Tecra 540CDT. Pentium 233MHz, 64MB RAM.
edit: I completely forgot. Of course, the display has a resolution of 1024x768, so there's no need for a VGA adapter to amplify the visual discomfort.

Not only did Win98SE run on it out of the box (and everything worked: USB, IR, PCMCIA, etc. – I was completely shocked), but it's also incredibly robust and can't be destroyed by drops from 1 meter onto tiles or by being stepped on by children.

As a bonus, you can connect it directly to 12V (using the power adapter socket, you can find the right connector for about 50 cents at an electronics store) and thus avoid any battery issues.
In conjunction with the Toshiba tools, you can adjust the display brightness (for nighttime driving!), etc.

and this thing is available on eBay starting at 300 euros (with >64MB).

'It currently has Office 2000 installed, etc... It's not super fast, but it's also not so slow that it's completely unbearable.'

The 8100 series also works very well with VAG-COM.

CU Gremlin.

Hello Ulf,

Several things make me hesitant about buying a used device:

- No 2-year warranty.
- Who guarantees that the used device is not prone to crashing? That can lead to complete unusability!
- Great prices on used laptops.

Therefore, I decided to go with an Elitegroup A900, which is now available for around 820 euros.
Another tip: not every laptop has a serial port!

Hi Rainer,

Hello.

@all: Thanks in advance for the answers you've provided so far .

Rainer K. wrote:

Several things speak against buying a used device for me: - No 2-year warranty. - Who guarantees that the used device is not prone to crashing? That can lead to complete unusability! - Great prices on used laptops.

Hmm... Based on your experience, are used items really something that should be approached with extra caution?

Could I claim a refund for a new device that is prone to failure and has a low chance of success? Or is this more common in used cars than in new ones?

I have a P75 laptop with 16 MB of RAM.

That's perfectly sufficient. I bought it from a colleague for 50 euros, and it works great. Win95 is installed.

The battery lasts for about 1 hour, and since charging is too annoying for me, I built an adapter. Now it gets power from the cigarette lighter socket and runs and runs and runs.

Regards,
Arne.

Hi Ulf,

ulf wrote:

Hmm... based on your experience, are used cars really something that should be approached with such heightened caution?

You don't know how many times it's been dropped, think about hairline cracks in multilayer circuit boards, overclocking attempts by enthusiasts, and the installation of questionable memory modules, etc.

ulf wrote:

Could I claim a new device that is prone to crashing and has a low chance of success?

"Of course, that part is then defective." Tip: Borrow a recent SUSE CD; it contains a disk testing program.
You should be able to find a memory testing program on the CT website (www.heise.de/ct).
This should run overnight without any errors.
So far, I've had 2 defective motherboards with occasional freezes and 1 defective memory module in my desktop computers. That's with a total of only 4 computers.

Best regards, Rainer.

Rainer K. wrote:

"Of course, that part is then defective." Tip: Borrow a recent SUSE CD; it contains a disk testing program. You should be able to find a memory testing program on the CT website (www.heise.de/ct). This should run overnight without any errors. So far, I've had 2 defective motherboards with occasional freezes and 1 defective memory module in my desktop computers. With a total of only 4 computers.

Hi Rainer,

Where can I find this Suse CD? (I don't know anyone who has one.)

I would also like to know more about the various defects found in your computers.
Were those all laptops?
And which of them were new, and which were used?

Hello Ulf,

If you can get a suitable item for 50 euros, like Arne can, then the decision is obviously made .
I personally spent almost three-quarters of a year searching for a decent device, but on eBay or in secondhand stores, the sellers always wanted exorbitant prices... and if I was going to buy it, I also wanted to be able to browse the internet with it.
The page loading works acceptably fast starting around Patium 120 with 32MB of RAM under Windows 95; otherwise, navigating up and down, for example, in a forum like this, becomes a frustrating experience.
The defects I listed were all brand new parts that I used to build computers myself, and they were all desktops/mini-towers.
When I think back to the PCs of my former classmates, it was often not the operating system from Redmond that was to blame for crashes, but rather faulty hardware and drivers were frequently the cause.
Even within our company, some of the branded devices (D***) or company-issued laptops that we use are not running 100% stably.
Try returning something you bought used after two weeks because it keeps crashing every two hours...
You don't need a Suse CD. The memory test is highly recommended as a general stability test. You can download it, for example, from ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctramtst.zip.

Best regards, Rainer.

I installed Windows XP on a VirtualBox virtual machine running on Ubuntu Linux, and then installed VCDS on it.

It works great.