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best laptop for tuning with ecmlink v3

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TrevStarr

10+ Year Contributor
58
0
Aug 7, 2009
Swainton, New_Jersey
this may or not be the place to post this but i was wondering for those who are using dsmlink what is the best computer for tuning with v.3..with black friday coming up i would like to get a new laptop for tuning when i receive my dsmlink software....thank you in advance

trevor
 
this may or not be the place to post this but i was wondering for those who are using dsmlink what is the best computer for tuning with v.3..with black friday coming up i would like to get a new laptop for tuning when i receive my dsmlink software....thank you in advance

trevor

Just get one of the $300 deals they usually have on black friday. ECMlink is not resource intensive and all you need is a USB port. I like using a cheap laptop for tuning so when I leave it in my car I'm not worried about getting a $1000+ laptop ripped off because some knucklehead decided they wanted it more than me.
 
You'll want as much battery life as you can get, lightweight, rugged, and cheap.

Personally I prefer a laptop with 32bit Windows XP at least two USB ports and at least one serial port but those are getting harder and harder to come by.

Personally I'm using a Vaio running 64bit Vista with no serial ports but after a lot of pain in the ass work I have a working serial port adapter and logging/flashing capabilities. My old and preferred tuning laptop reached the point where the battery no longer did anything and it shut off randomly. That one was purchased in 1999.
 
+1 if you can, go grab a netbook, Radioshack has them for 300 bucks outright I think, and Radioshack is a rip (I work there, not just bashing them). It would also make it easy to store out of site in multiple locations since they are so small.
 
If you don't need a "NEW" laptop. Then find an independent computer store around your place. I've seen DELL D600's for cheap!! They've got a multiple USB ports and a serial port, built in wireless. Plus, they're not too slow.

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I'm not 100% positive that a mac will work as I us a Toshiba but I would assume it would as long as the program is compatible.
 
I coped this from extreme psi a while ago. hope it helps

We have reports of people running DSMLink acceptably on a P100 with 24megs of RAM.
A laptop like this can be had for less than $100 on E-Bay. Preferably, though, you'll want
to locate a laptop with a little more meat to it. Our suggested minimum platform would be
a P233 with at least 32meg of RAM running Win98. You'll be very happy with that setup.

The only other major requirement of the laptop is that it provide an RS232, DB9
serial interface of some sort. Almost all older laptops include this, but most newer ones
these days do not! Be sure that you have some way of getting a DB9 serial port out of
the laptop before committing to it. We have had reports of PCMCIA serial port adapters
working well on laptops that do not have built-in serial ports. Also, the USB to DB9
devices seem to work fine as well. DB25 to DB9 converters plugged into the printer
port will *NOT* work.

Also note that the 1G version will be particularly sensitive to which USB to DB9
converter you select. We've found the Keyspan adapter, available at CompUSA
among other places, works very well. In fact, according to a thread posted on our
user's group collecting information from the "field", this may be he only USB to DB9
converter that works properly with the 1G ECU's baud rate.
 
I coped this from extreme psi a while ago. hope it helps

We have reports of people running DSMLink acceptably on a P100 with 24megs of RAM.
A laptop like this can be had for less than $100 on E-Bay. Preferably, though, you'll want
to locate a laptop with a little more meat to it. Our suggested minimum platform would be
a P233 with at least 32meg of RAM running Win98. You'll be very happy with that setup.

The only other major requirement of the laptop is that it provide an RS232, DB9
serial interface of some sort. Almost all older laptops include this, but most newer ones
these days do not! Be sure that you have some way of getting a DB9 serial port out of
the laptop before committing to it. We have had reports of PCMCIA serial port adapters
working well on laptops that do not have built-in serial ports. Also, the USB to DB9
devices seem to work fine as well. DB25 to DB9 converters plugged into the printer
port will *NOT* work.

Also note that the 1G version will be particularly sensitive to which USB to DB9
converter you select. We've found the Keyspan adapter, available at CompUSA
among other places, works very well. In fact, according to a thread posted on our
user's group collecting information from the "field", this may be he only USB to DB9
converter that works properly with the 1G ECU's baud rate.



If he's getting V3 that won't matter as all of their cables are now USB data cables. This came from ECM Tuning website.

The standard datalogging cables for both the 1G and 2G platforms are now native USB interfaces. These use our own in-house designs that have been extensively tested over the last year. We've never had a single issue with any of them. They're rugged and designed with years of experience behind them. They're fully opto-isolated and neither requires power from the car. They should connect more easily than the V2 cables and should prove to be even more reliable.

DB9 NOTE: We provided DB9 cables for so long in order to support the use of Palm Pilots and Windows Mobile devices. We want to continue to provide support for these platforms so we will provide some form of DB9 cables as extra options. The details simply haven't been defined yet on how these will be made available.

Hope that helps.
 
Anything you can find on Black Friday will do the job.

I ran V2 on a 15+ year old Dell laptop with 16MB RAM. I run V3 on an older laptop with maybe 256 MB RAM. Sometimes I find some lagging in the graph display on my work laptop (Vista 32 bit with 2GB RAM), but I also have 35+ values logged. The log still captures plenty of data, but the live graph gets kind of choppy.
 
I just bought a Dell Latitude D400 a few weeks ago for $200 on Ebay. Used, but in great condition. Came with a good copy of Windows XP. 1.4Ghz/1GB RAM/40 GB hard drive......12" screen (nice and small, portable, great for the car) Works great.....It's a nice little unit. Maybe alittle much for the DSMLink, but it also is a nice computer with built in wireless card, ethernet card, external (USB) CD ROM (makes the computer slimmer).....I'm happy with the purchase.
 
I just bought a Dell Latitude D400 a few weeks ago for $200 on Ebay. Used, but in great condition. Came with a good copy of Windows XP. 1.4Ghz/1GB RAM/40 GB hard drive......12" screen (nice and small, portable, great for the car) Works great.....It's a nice little unit. Maybe alittle much for the DSMLink, but it also is a nice computer with built in wireless card, ethernet card, external (USB) CD ROM (makes the computer slimmer).....I'm happy with the purchase.


Just looked into that. I want to pick up a dedicated laptop for the car...throwing my better one around the garage seems like asking for trouble.

This looks like a solid choice...i'll probably do it:thumb:
 
I actually just bought a crappy Acer aspire one to use for link.It was only like 300bucks,and its tiny.It works flawless and I actually use it more than my regular laptop!I never use that tank anymore...LOL :) I would recomend it for the price you cant beat it IMO.
 
thanks fellas!!

i got the acer for my gf for christmas last year to travel with....and was a nice lil computer....wasnt sure if it would work or not!!

thanks again
trevor
 
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