Dell Car laptop
 

I have been offered a Dell laptop at a pretty good price and so am in the process of building it into a dedicated car laptop with Etka and VCDS, and Elsa too if it will fit, which I intend to leave in the car permanently.

As I was doing this, I was wondering if any forum members would be interested in one of these, as I can get a couple more?

Its a Dell Latitude D430, which is small and portable, but not the newest on the block (it has an Intel Core 2 Duo @1.33ghz, 1GB RAM and 80GB drive, WiFi and 3G), so far its running Win XP and ETKA 7.4 (running through all the updates now) and I hope to get Elsa on it. I can put Vista or Win7 on it instead, but it would benefit from more memory to do this.

Once I have completed the build, its pretty easy to duplicate, so is there any interest from other members at £60 each plus postage?

Sounds interesting..
 

How old are these? condition? Charger included? I've not purchased my VCDS cable yet, but this would be a good start.

430s will be about 5 years old but work with almost any dell laptop charger (and replacement batteries will be reasonably cheap if it needs one).

Yes, its 5 years old, and in good nick with charger and batty seems to be holding up well too. I also got a docking station with it with the CD drive, but wont be using that in the car as it makes it bigger. Heres a quick snap of it running through the last of the Audi updates.

I will take 1 or 2 at that price if they come with charger and docking bay, no need to install anything.

Pm sent

You can't go wrong with the Dell to be honest even if it's 5 years old and only little spec as thats all what's needed for the use of VCDS and ETKA/ElsaWin.

Price is very reasonable +++

PS. Do you have to change the system time to launch your ETKA and is there a trick to get the updates working as mine 7.3 just wont do the updates.

I have 7.4 international with update tool 1.05 that works just fine, I believe it should work with 7.3 as well. I you PM me your e-mail address I can send you a copy.

D430 was a solid laptop.. I still have my D420 from when I worked there, approaching 8 years old and still works fine.

Does this work with my Sega Mega Drive, you IT guys Bamboozle me :Confused::Confused::Confused:

Dont worry Charlie, if you need advice on electrickery/computery stuff there is a lot of expertise on the forum or in the Glasgow area. If you want to give it a scan then someone will be glad to oblige I am sure. +++

Help
 

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I have been changing the date, but found a czech updater online which seems to work nicely, but there is a limit to the updates That you can apply I believe (it was certainly asking for 7.4 when I tried running the updater on a 7.3 installation)

It looks like anymore that I can get will be a slightly lower spec, either 1.06ghz or 1.2ghz, but hopefully I'll be able to knock a few quid off if theres inteest.

Your e-mail does not like my attachments so I have added it here.

Update tool is for data only, does not update prices, I have not had price updates for a long time myself. Just run the update tool, it should find the Etka installation and download updates for it, the next time you start Etka it should see the downloaded updates and ask you if you want to install them. You might have to repeat it several times if you have not had updates for a long time, I think It’s only downloading 5 updates for each brand at the time. I have also attached latest price files I have which are from September 2013.

Regards
Ainars

Morning Ainars
You are The Man, Thank You for that, great stuff +++
Not sure what's wrong with the email.
It's good to have up to date prices from time to time, but it's not a big problem, local Audi parts blokes are not that bad.
Cheers :cheers:

Marcin

Thanks Tristan, laptops received,, great condition, almost like new cosmetic condition, come with extended life 9 cell batteries instead of standard 6 cell, bit bulkier but great battery life, shows 8 hours life on idle. Docking stations with CD/DVD drive and serial, parallel ports, maybe not needed for everyone but I have serial cable for Volvo FCR and parallel oscilloscope.

The only thing that lets them down is a slow hard drive and not many upgrade options with it being 1.8 ZIF drive but I ordered 128GB SSD from Far East and will upgrade RAM to 2GB.


Don't want to take away opportunity to have one from others but if there are no takers I am happy to buy couple more.

Does it work on 7.3?

Hmmm...looks like it works, but I don't think it doesn't
When you launch it the error message pops up and after clicking ignore everything goes as it should but nothing is done.

Sorry to hear it did not work. It does not give me that error even on PC where there is no ETKA, just says 'No Etka install found'.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1402669900

It could be because I use XP Mode on Win7 (virtual machine) :Confused:
Is 7.4 compatible with Win7 (64bit)???

Not sure, I think the software should be but it needs Hardlock driver and in the past there was no x64 Hardlock driver. Have not looked into it as I use it on XP laptop.

Yes yes yes, it's the hardlock driver which isn't compatible with win7.
I was using XP laptop as well until I rediscovered a xp mode on win7, now I've got ultimate package finally, vcds, newest elsawin and etka on one laptop running win7 :D ... And on a desktop/office win7 pc as well, why not :cool:

Cheers Ainar +++

Ps. I'll log in later on to my other proper xp os on the second drive and will see if this update works on 7.3

Alternative updaters
 

These are the updaters that I have used - one for prices and one for the software

I would certainly be interested if there are any available. My 8 is getting to the point where permanent diagnostics will be a boon!

Great stuff mate +++ It works with 7.3
Prices updated. Products updates are already installed so no further updates needed. Great, it's good to have up to date prices instead of calling stealers each time +++

Cheers Guy :cheers:

Great little laptop, superb for the price and runs the software very quickly. Thanks Tristan.

Can you get any more?

I'll find out and let you know+++