Hi,

I recently bought Skoda Fabia 1,4 16V 2002 and looking into buying diagnostic cable so I can do as much as I can on my car.

I am confused as I can buy cheap cable for £25 or more expensive CAN version that goes over £200.

My question: What can a CAN cable do extra when it costs so much more?

I am looking into the one from Gendan, they offer it for £19. But I'd rather buy the CAN one in the case I'd have any issues with the cheap one. I read that some people had it stopped working after few minutes..

I am right if I suppose that the cheap one will be fine for my current car, but if I get the more recent car like Octavia 2 will need to buy the CAN cable or is there any version in the middle what would be working on both?

I have laptop with Linux, is there any handy open source version or is it better to use the one for Windows with Wine?

Cheers

Hi,

I recently bought Skoda Fabia 1,4 16V 2002 and looking into buying diagnostic cable so I can do as much as I can on my car.

I am confused as I can buy cheap cable for £25 or more expensive CAN version that goes over £200.

My question: What can a CAN cable do extra when it costs so much more?

The CAN cable will mean you have a fully licensed version of VCDS and not just the free version of the sortware with the cheap cable. So you can do more than just read error codes.

I am looking into the one from Gendan, they offer it for £19. But I'd rather buy the CAN one in the case I'd have any issues with the cheap one. I read that some people had it stopped working after few minutes..

I have the cheap one and it works fine for checking error codes.

I am right if I suppose that the cheap one will be fine for my current car, but if I get the more recent car like Octavia 2 will need to buy the CAN cable or is there any version in the middle what would be working on both?

I have laptop with Linux, is there any handy open source version or is it better to use the one for Windows with Wine?

Cheers

Octvavia II, Golf MkV etc need CAN so cheap cable will only do basic ODB error check (I think). The all singing and dancing CAN version will work on older non CAN cars though.

No there isn't a viable open source equivalent. Also last time I tried there was a problem with the driver for the FTDI chipset which is in the cheap cables (and the expensive ones too) which means it doesn't work so VCDS running in WINE is a non starter. If you have a laptop with a serial port and you can get a serial cable it should.

Look at the Ross Tech website for a comparison between the lite and full versions of VCDS.

Keep in mind that the money you spend isn't just for the hardware/interface, it mostly pays for the software license and the support as well as future software updates. There is also a non-CAN version at Gendan (which you may have looked at as well) but if you spend the money you may as well get the full setup to begin with. The CAN capable hardware is necessary not just for the Octavia but also for the newest Fabia. We have recently updated our compatibility charts which will tell you the models and the hardware required.

I am not aware of any VAG specific diagnostic software that runs native on Linux nor does VCDS but we do have some hints on how to get VCDS to work in our FAQ.