Diagnostic software

Santa is bringing my daughter a new laptop so I'm going to inherit
the old one. It's a Dell with 300+ mhz processor, 128 megs of RAM, and
a 6 gig HD. I'm looking for software, cabling, and appropriate
connectors, etc to load on the comp to aid in diagnosis for OBD1 and
OBD2 for the following vehicles...
1993 Camry
1993 Caddy
2000 Mitsubishi
2004 Chevy
Computer aided diagnostics are a new area to me. Any recommendations
on a good package would be most appreciated.
TIA
DFB





"When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's
constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into
his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all."
- Justice William O. Douglas

I've just started investigating OBD because like you I have multiple cars
for which I'd like to find a single solution. I recommend you visit
www.obd-2.com and particularly http://www.obd-2.com/dlcnet.html which will
allow you to enter your vehicle descriptions and they will provide a quote
for the least cost solution. Unfortunately for you the first model year
they cover is 1994. I plugged the last 2 cars from your list into their
page and it told me that the cars use different interfaces (there are 4
different OBD-II interfaces) so you need either two different pieces of
hardware, i.e. an ISO and a VPW interface, or perhaps their new TriCan would
be a better choice (more expensive) because it handles all 4 OBD-II
interfaces.

This is just a place to start. You'll get lots of hits for pages describing
other systems if you do a little googling.

BTW, I'd like to hear recommendations from any readers of this thread who
have experience or knowledge in the use of open source software for OBD. I
need to get ATF temperature from a 96 VW Golf and I think that I probably
need to make my own modifications in software to get that value.

"MisterSkippy" > wrote in message
...
> Santa is bringing my daughter a new laptop so I'm going to inherit
> the old one. It's a Dell with 300+ mhz processor, 128 megs of RAM, and
> a 6 gig HD. I'm looking for software, cabling, and appropriate
> connectors, etc to load on the comp to aid in diagnosis for OBD1 and
> OBD2 for the following vehicles...
> 1993 Camry
> 1993 Caddy
> 2000 Mitsubishi
> 2004 Chevy
> Computer aided diagnostics are a new area to me. Any recommendations
> on a good package would be most appreciated.
> TIA
> DFB