Quote Originally Posted by bobdec View Post
Just for drill, does you PC recognize either of the cables in device manager - com ports . I assume you have good cig lighter +12volts for the 2nd cable (ALDL/RS232) you listed, that's a known good one.
Yes, the cig lighter has good power and ground, it will run my snap on scanner and get data from the car just fine.

yeah, windows recognizes the serial to usb 'bridge' it calls it. It changes com ports depending on which usb port I plug it into.... but still can't get tunerpro to pass the cable test, no matter what settings I put into tunerpro.
I check in device manager to find what com port it is and set that in tunerpro... it always says 'cable not found or not functioning -- tested at 8192 baud' , even if it is not hooked up to the vehicle, (as mentioned on another post -- says it will fail if hooked up to the car) and the yellow message is at the bottom of tunerpro "DA not connected" message shows.

I have even tried unchecking the box for 'use 16550 compatible UART' in device manager properties for the com port to see if that makes a difference.

It's now set at 9600 baud because there's no 8192 option -- wonder if I set it slower if that would work? -- haven't had a chance over the last few days to even get close to the car.

The usb adapter cable has an led on it -- I'm assuming to indicate data flowing, but is on solid if the 12v on the aldl cable is plugged in-- not sure if that's any good for it or not.
The guy at micro-center said there are only 3 serial to usb chips made -- no matter what brand cable you buy it will have one of those in it -- this one matches the specs of the tripplite keyscan usa19hs but he said there's no way he knows to tell which chip it has in it.... (they don't stock the tripplite) ( dunno if he knows what he's talking about or not, but he seemed confident in what he knew)

The aldl cable itself will put the car into diagnostic mode with the jumper set one way( check engine light flashes with lean/rich O2 crosscounts with engine running, or will flash code 12 with key off (no codes stored) ) and with the jumper set the other way, the engine dies. That's without the serial to usb adapter hooked up. and also with the 12v cigarette adapter either plugged in or not -- doesn't make a difference)

The FTDI CHIPI-X10 is only 15 bucks -- the newer aldl to usb complete cables are around 60..... I'd rather spend the 15 if I knew it would work......


I wish I knew where/what to read to understand this stuff, but when typing in rs232 to usb or anything like that, all I get is links to buy some part. If I could learn how this stuff works, then I could figure it out myself.