looking on ebay theer appears to be a lot of VAG COM cables. now i thought the cable was expensive but they all seem to be about £5 are these legit and will they work with the free software and on a mk1 Oct VRS?

Rich

They should do.. but I have a cheapish cable (USB) that I bought a while ago. It seems to work until I start the car, and then it fails to "talk" to the car. I used to have an older serial cable that was ok (till the laptop broke ;-( )

What you won't get is a licence for the full version and the support from the Ross-Tech team.

The budget cable does have it's uses and is a good taster to see if you like the software.

ahh good stuff i wasnt sure if it was gonna be the right thing or some random bit of usb attached to a block.

i have a budget cable somewhere, never used it as i have a proper one from ross tech of which can use the latest version too!!

Not mentioned yet but you can read fault codes and delete them. They work fine you just cannot adapt things,Take bhp figures,reset throttle body etc,etc without the registered version.

Not mentioned yet but you can read fault codes and delete them

I got one of the budget cables from ebay and this is all you can do with it which is handy cos thats all i wanted it to do

Apart from that you cant do much else as it wont talk to the car if you try anything else at all

I've just bought a Sealey VS862 VAG Code Reader & Reset Tool:

Sealey

I wouldn't ever pay the retail price of £250, but managed to get one for £60 through a friend.

Haven't tried it yet as I only picked it up on Sunday. But it definately feels like a quality item. Very sturdy and comes in a lovely case!

Since I don't have a laptop I wanted a stand alone system that I could trust. Home servicing should be alot easier now!

Not mentioned yet but you can read fault codes and delete them. They work fine you just cannot adapt things,Take bhp figures,reset throttle body etc,etc without the registered version.

thats the main reason for buying it is to look into the error codes and just be cool to see what the engine is doing.

Not mentioned yet but you can read fault codes and delete them. They work fine you just cannot adapt things,Take bhp figures,reset throttle body etc,etc without the registered version.

how do i read bhp?

engine module 08 iirc.

Block 120- bhp/torque click log then do a flat out run in third.

ta, ill give that a go at some point

will i be able to measure boost pressure?

nope not without registered version.