Laptop will not connect while running?
 

Ive almost finished my ongoing project, GT35R, microtech, with supporting mods. However, when my car is running the micro will not connect to the laptop. It connects fine while the car's ignition is on, and during cranking. But when I start it, the box pops up and says no conection to COM port #1. And after its running if I try to connect I get the same thing.

I have the laptop adapter with a 9-pin to usb adapter. Any thoughts?


-Ben

Interesting. My guess is interference. How is your grounding set up at the Microtech? What about the condition of your ignition wires? Laptop running on battery or AC?

well mines have no conection at all. it works fine with the handset, but it doesnt show up on the laptop. maybe i got the wrong 9 pin to usb adaptor.

Micro is grounded to the drivers side front shock tower, paint is scraped off to bare metal. I cant remember what the laptop was running off, but i think it was AC. Ignition wires are mostly stock, besides the micro wiring. Ill try again next time i need to start the car.

-Ben

It really should be grounded directly to the battery, but I doubt that's your problem. Are you using a USB to serial adapter? Some are really cheap and do crazy things like tie the ground of the car to the ground of the laptop. Bad news if you get a ground loop.

Ok this is info needs to be stickied. But I will say it again. If you use a 9-pin usb adapter. You need to uninstall microtech, uninstall all your 9pin-usb drivers/software. And start fresh. Install the usb adapter configure it to port 1. Restart the machine. Reinstall microtech and it should work just fine.

Thanks for the info, i will do that and get back with you!

-Ben

Well, I did the uninstall-reinstall procedure. Now when i try and connect to the ECU while the car is running it says COM port 1 is unavailable. The ecu connects to the laptop just fine while not running. My next guess would be to try a different ground I.E. the battery. Or maybe i just need a different usb adapter.

Aaron, the 9 pin-usb adapter I have is a "cables to go". What are you using?

I didn't expect the uninstall to work. With all do respect to the original poster, the Microtech does nothing involving COM ports during the install, and reinstalling the driver of the adapter will not effect the Microtech software in any way.

You need to make sure to set up the proper COM port for your adapter. If you have a physical COM2 on the machine, disable it and set your USB adapter to COM2. You can generally do this by right clicking on the USB to serial adapter in Device Manager.

I don't use USB to serial adapters because they are too problematic. I use a PCMCIA to serial adapter that provides actual hardware based UARTs.

Its has really nothing to do with microtech. Its mostly XP and 2k problems itself. I use one of these usb adapter on my microtech and at work all the time. Ive done this to many other people that have had the same problem and it works. This just happens to be something else wrong with his wiring.

What happens is when you install a program looking to talk on port 1. For some reason the registry doesn't understand if you register a port 1 later after the install of the program.

Well I ordered a PCMCIA to serial adapter (damn those things are expensive!). I surely hope it works!

Thanks Aaron, the adapter arrived and it works great now!