Laptop and Sensors

[Stewart1000]

i am buying a laptop and thinking about hooking it up to my ecu, sensors, something that lets me read the sensors without having gauges.

anyone got any bright ideas out there, laptop for $100 and then i suppose i would like to spend no more than $100 on setting the lot up.

there must be some thing you can plug into the laptop and then into an adapter, something like that...

Thanks
Stewart

[Jamie_87]

Where u getting a laptop for $100???? Most second hand ones i've seen are like 400+. I bought mine brand new for 800 with 100acer cash back, but damn 100 bucks, sounds way too cheap for a laptop???

[JD]

wouldn't u only get a pentium 1 or 2 for that much?
i wouldn't think they would have the power to proccess the info quick enough for the info to be accurate.

[Snotty]

diagnostic cable would be your best bet,
Dunno how well a $100 laptop woiuld handle it though

[Stewart1000]

aw yeah, wasnt the first space ship launched off something way way less than a pentium 1, so i dont think gattign info from a few sensors should bother it.

it is a pretty crap one tho, pentium 2 i think.

i dont think you can connect a cable to it anywhere, its just got the LED's on the ecu to read codes... i was thinking some sort of adapter to plug sensors into and then go into the computer

[J_D]

The lunar module for the moon landing had about the same computing power as a 286/16mhz

I dont see any problem with using an old laptop other than the fact you might have to write the software yourself if the computer doesnt run windows as it would be highly unlikely someone has written a program in DOS.

VL's should have a diagnostics plug somewhere, most fuel injected cars do. You might have to get a hold of a wiring schematic to find it.

[Snotty]

If you dont wanna use a diagnostic cable the only other thing i can think of would be running a data logger, but that would be farely hard