Tool geeks gets Techstream for Xmas

I know, I'm hopeless. Curiosity got the better of me and I sent for one of those $15 Mini-VCI cables and the chinese ripped off software. I tried to get it to install on Win 8.1 (it's supposed to be possible with a bunch of tweaking.) No luck and no joy. So it was on to Craigslist to look for an old XP laptop. I found a nice one, a low mileage Dell with a pretty clean hard disk and 2 megs of memory. The BIG computer! (for 2003.) The VCI cable came with a disk that had installation instructions in a video. Hateful video player and the video played way too fast. But the software installed on the computer and did what it was supposed to.

Today I got to try it for the first time. Works pretty well--tho I'm sure I don't know 1/4 of its capabilities! A new learning curve I guess. I have about $50 in the whole thing, wishing Chap was closer for tutorials.

Anyone in the Tucson area is welcome to use the computer and the cable. Next thing I gotta acquire is a Gen 1 factory service manual.

 

On my Win 8.1, the program wouldn't load.Getting an old, dedicated XP laptop was purely a shortcut for me. Nice to use a non network laptop for this--not exposed to all the BS on the internet. No Online, No Threats.

I actually looked at the Win 8.1 plus writeup. The version of techstream I got was not saved as a RAR program and didn't need extracting. Life is short, time is more expensive than cash, buying an old cleaned up Dell for less than $40 was a decent deal. I'm sure I could have gotten the Techstream stuff to work under VM, what can I say? I'm lazy, hate dickin with computers, and nervious about all the crap requiring anti-virus, malware, and other BS if the computer is gonna be online.

It's a pretty nice, middle high end laptop, too!