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Any interest in "scanning" laptops?

dyeager535

dyeager535

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I got a few laptops a few years back, for the sole purpose of setting them up and selling them to people that would use them for scanning GM OBD1 setups. (with winALDL, tunerpro, etc)

I just took some time to go through them, figure out which ones are good, set them up a bit, and decided why not ask on here?

They are NOTHING fancy, 266-300MHz most of them, maybe 32-64MB RAM, 3-6GB hard drives, and I still have to sort out if I've got enough CD drives and batteries for all of them.

I liked the idea for the fact that I wouldn't feel too bad breaking one, or having it stolen, or it quitting after a year of operation for as "low" a price as they could be. Anymore, I figure floppy or CD drives are worthless with USB drives being so common, and as slow as these machines are, trying to install anything other than the windows 2000 on them would be pointless.

I'm thinking $100 if I can sell them complete with CD drive, battery, and power supply. Missing pieces, maybe $75. I suspect you can still find individual pieces on ebay, you could about a year ago.

What's anyone think?
 
I've always wanted to have a laptop for just that purpose but new they are too damn expensive to justify buying one for that purpose alone. The only thing to consider obviously is if they are fast enough for the programs that would be needed to interface with our trucks.
 
Yeah, I've run both winALDL and tunerpro RT on these. At 160 baud (what the early TBI ECM's spit data out at) these are plenty fast. :)

In actuality they work fine with the 8192 baud rate of the better ECM's as well.

Good thing IMO on these older laptops is that the interface cable diagrams are all designed for serial cables, and the newer laptops have completely done away with serial ports. Makes for some weird problems with USB adapters and what not.

I'll have to dig around, at one point I had a fair number of the cables that can be used to make the 160 baud cables, I'd include them with the laptops if I can find them. People would still have to load whatever tuning software they want, and actually BUILD the cable, but I'd provide the expensive pieces of the puzzle.
 
I would def be interested in one as I have no idea what my rig is doing while it is running and I am not allowed to take the wifes laptop anywhere near the truck or garage:o :D .

Ira
 
Cool. I'll try to get on this, but time is unfortunately quite limited for me. I'll post back up when I'm satisfied that I've got at least one good one, but hopefully I can put the pieces together to make a few good ones.
 
I am posting right now on my Garage laptop. It is an old Dell CPi P2 with a 366 processor and 266mb ram. I brought it back to life with parts and memory I bought on e bay cheap.. I think I have maby 50 bucks in it including the wireless card. It runs Win XP home fine, and is part of my growing wireless network.
For scanning OBD 1 and OBD2. I run Auto X Ray software. It will easily run win ALDL but dont really need it with the Auto x ray stuff.
I also use it to tune/program the EEC lV in my Mustang with TwEECer hardware and software. I wish there was something like TwEECer for GM ECMs. Very easy program to use and no chip burning
Even tho it is an old laptop and a little slow, it works fine for a garage unit. If it falls into a bucket of oil I am really not out any money.
 
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