Good Score On Laptop With A Serial Port .

[discopotato03]

Hi all , we all know what a pain trying to find a worthwhile laptop computer with a 9 pin serial port for tuning is like .

I came across a computer shop in Kogarah that deals in lots of ex lease portables and Dell seems to be their thing .

I had been using an old Dell D610 I got second hand a while ago and anyone who knows a bit about the old Pentium M Centrino systems knows they are a bit slow - sort of single cam RB20 with a carby type scenerio . The thing was that it had the all important 9 pin D (DB9) serial port which seems to work best with programmable engine management systems ie PFC . There are a few serial/USB converter cables getting around but the ones with a suitable chip in one end plug are few and far between , expensive , and even the ones Datalogit ship can fail which leaves you nowhere if your computer doesn't have a real serial port .

Long/short the old Dell D610's battery started to die and a mate into this stuff said go see Jimmy at Albit Computers and don't just look at batteries .

I asked Jimmy what the fastest 2nd hand laptop was that had a real serial port and he came up with a Dell D630 which has more guts than the older D610 .

The fastest of this family uses a Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz processor and has 2G of ram and a SATA 160G hard drive . I got him to put the extra 2 Gig of ram in and he threw in the Blue Tooth chip and the larger 9 cell battery for nix . It came with an original Dell Vista disc plus the usual power adapter and a near new Dell bag for $389 which I reckon is a bargin for what it is . Its noticably faster than the old one and everything in it is a generation or two better as well .

I gave up on my old PC a while back and use the laptop for everything now , it goes with me on away jobs at work and the 3G Network dongle I have means wherever theres 3G phone coverage I can access the net .

ATM this thing has two partitions and when its set up the way I like it will be a dual boot Win7 64 bit and WinXP 32 bit to cover most eventualities .

So , anyone looking for a portable with a real serial port can do worse than these things . They were also available with processors down to 1.6 Ghz so if your on a tighter budget and just need serial and USB ports for tuning you can spend less than I did .

Cheers A .

[DVS JEZ]

Good score. I have about 4 different

Usb to serial adaptors. Theyre a Pain in the ass.

[ARTZ]

damnit I got a dell d630 in a bag, pefrect working order except the graphics is stuffed making the screen all funky colours.(I blame stoopid facebook games).I got an old datalogit too but cant use it yet cause of the plug,, is it any better than a HAKO , cause it may be easier to buy a hako than fix my laptop..??

[JonnoHR31]

cheapest option would be to buy a decent serial to usb converter like the one that comes with datalogit

[ARTZ]

seems they are very hit n miss though..

[Crans]

pcmcia serial card. I have bought them for mine sites for connecting to plant controllers and they work flawlessly

[JonnoHR31]

seems they are very hit n miss though..

yer the cheap ones are very unreliable. but the one supplied with datalogit is decent, works perfectly 99% of the time for me with several different tuning programs and ecus

[ARTZ]

pcmcia serial card. I have bought them for mine sites for connecting to plant controllers and they work flawlessly

is this what your talking about

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RS-232-Serial-Port-Express-Card-ExpressCard-Adapter-/160642925895?pt=AU_Laptop_Accessories&hash=item2567108547

[Crans]

Exactly what im talking about. There probably will be drivers for Windows 7. Cant hurt to try at that price.

[ARTZ]

yeah new one I listed is compatible..will give it a shot..

[W0rp3D]

I believe fc hako comes with usb not serial port and is cheaper than datalogit.

[ARTZ]

yeah it is but i already have datalogit, just the laptop with serial port shit itself

[paulR32gtr]

damnit I got a dell d630 in a bag, pefrect working order except the graphics is stuffed making the screen all funky colours.

Have you tried opening it up and pushing the screen connector back in? I had the same problem with my old D820, thought it was a goner but that connector had just walked a little loose

[zoidbergmerc]

Be careful with the D630s, I used to have them in my fleet and if you even THINK about dropping them the heatsinks will fall off the Graphics cards and cook them.

If you hear that fan going nuts then if needs to be taken apart and re mount the heat sink with some new thermal paste.

The problem you're describing with the funky colours is a symptom of the core in the graphics card over heating\being damaged from over heating.

[ARTZ]

yeah my theory is the missus playing fb games all night with it sitting on a pillow getting no ventilation overheated it..

I tried everything even tried baking it in the oven..didnt work

I actually reformatted it at one point, which worked for a day or so but then it went again..

mine was the model with inbuilt graphics so it cant be replaced,. There was alot of complaints about it on the net, even talk of Dell sueing nvidia..

[zoidbergmerc]

yep that'd do it!

Once I'd get one back for repairs I'd just give them a brand newey. And sell the old ones on Grays.