I barrowed my friends laptop to get some datalogs on my car, had to format it and do a bunch of crap then finally went to hook it up to the car, only to find out it dosent have a RS-232 port.

Searched on the net and found that you can get an adaptor to convert the RS-232 to USB and use that.

Anyone do this? Any reason it wouldnt work?

 

I've heard of some people using it and it works fine, others don't.

I've always used a laptop with a serial port on it. It's been around longer and it's proven to work time and time again..

Tails

 

I have a Belkin F5U103 adapter that I use and it works fine. Actually, for what ever reason the serial port on my dell wouldn't work not matter what I tried so I got the adapter and use the USB port instead and haven't had any problems scanning or programming using Tunercat.

Brian

 

You can buy usb cables from Moates.net

 

I have the same Belkin that's mentioned and used it before without any problems.

 

Instead of buying the adapter i opted for the USB Cable that AKM sells now. Much easier than messing with the adapter.

 

yea, he also offers an exchange policy, i just sent my old rs232 cable back to him and he is sending a newer USB capable cable back to me. Nice guy, and he does great work.

 

Yes desktops all still have a com port so you don't have to use an adapter.They're still in use for commercial and industrial equipment.
However if you do have to use an adapter with a laptop the best one is a PCMCIA to RS232 (looks like a wireless card) as it gives you a true com port by having many pins it connects to the laptop with.
I used one like this with my newer Toshiba XP laptop with LT-1 edit before I got an older cheap IBM with a built in com port just for my car. Carputing recommends this style of adapter.This one has a rugged connection to the card compared with other ones that have a more fragile easy to pull off connecter.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-PCMCIA-RS232...QQcmdZViewItem

USB adapters use timing as there's only 3 pins.
This timing method is why the usb adapters work with some programs but not others.
The PCMCIA card will work with all programs.