I bought a cable from eBay with an OBD-I 20 pin connector on one end and two serial connections on the other. My laptop only has one serial port so i'm planning on buying a USB to serial adaptor to make the second serial port. The cable also came with a whole host of ancient looking software, i found an executable file called kds.exe which looked like the most likely thing for diagnostics. Has anyone had any success with this setup?

this is something I'd like to get into eventually. You can find lots of info on www.mp3car.com for other OBD setups, and some BMW implementations. I doubt anyone has done an E31 but something tells me the E36 setups would be similar.

I'd be interested to know how you fare on this one

Besides the 20 pin connector you need good software as well... The best one is the professional DIS/GT1 from BMW dealers that can easily be installed on a regular laptop of you know what you doing... Every other software is junk regardless of what anyone claims. I tried them all...

http://www.bmw850.us/RESTORE/LKM/DIS.jpg

And of course you need the right beers as well :-)

http://www.bmw850.us/RESTORE/LKM/LKM-3.jpg

Contact me offline if interested in this professional setup.... It does cost a pretty $$$ but you can diagnose and program just like the dealer does :-)

As for the cable you got is for the older version of Carsoft, pretty much junk software...


I bought a cable from eBay with an OBD-I 20 pin connector on one end and two serial connections on the other. My laptop only has one serial port so i'm planning on buying a USB to serial adaptor to make the second serial port. The cable also came with a whole host of ancient looking software, i found an executable file called kds.exe which looked like the most likely thing for diagnostics. Has anyone had any success with this setup?