You are using a serial connection to communicate with the car so signals are sent and received using the same wires. This is my experience based using two cheap cables with a number of laptops. The central electrics controller on my old Octavia was also a bit hit and miss too. From memory it is a magnetti marelli ECU. The engine controller on our mkI Leon is very fussy and requires you to significantly reduce the connection speed before it will communicate properly. Installing and Registering VCDS Cable or VAG-COM With the cheap cables some cars work fine but with some you can have trouble accessing controllers. I also try it on my daugther Jetta and works OK. I used on my Octavia and I can read the codes and erase them. But then you are in to the world of fiddling with the connection speed if you have any issues connecting to one or more controllers.
I would get the wireless device Ross-Tech is releasing this month, maybe even next week.Check this post and it explain how to set up the COM port. Some of the MK4 PD cars work but not all. The fleabay version only works on cars prior to 03' in most cases.
Also, Ross Tech has excellent tech support for those who buy the full version. I have had one for many years and if something happened to it, it'd be the first thing I replaced, bar none. The hassle it could save you later is worth the extra and if you ever decide to sell it, the prices they fetch are often very close to new, so you're not losing money. I would definitely get the real thing and not the lite. They're afraid they'll fall off the edge of the box and be lost to oblivion. Thinking outside the box is difficult for some. It is called dope because it does make you dumb. It would be better to have a good interpreter to make sure you are ordering something edible instead of dried pig's ears and a heaping mountain of deep fried chicken tongues.įor you, you don't want to get a code that says something about an O2 sensor being bad, when your car doesn't have one. It is a little like going to a foreign restaurant where you don't know the language and no one there speaks yours. The advantage of a full blown VCDS is that it will read the specific VW codes and give the proper interpretation of them. I've had VCDS for years now and continue to be surprised at how useful it is. I'd say skip the lite version and go with the real thing. I may have to try to make it there to meet some of yall. Thank you all for your knowledge and for taking your time to share it. I have been trying to absorb so much info in the past 2 weeks and just am looking for a little extra guidance. If so does anyone have a recommendation on a cable I could get. Now if I am just going to be working on my car here and there, would the vcds lite be sufficient. I have been looking at the numerous posts about vcds and vcds lite.