[Second Series]

Do these numbers look good? I haven’t driven the truck for a couple years. None of the gauges are connected and the check engine light is not connected so I wanted to see how things check out.
I made an ALDL cable to connect a computer to my ’88 k2500. The cable is based on instructions I found on the web. I have an older laptop with the DB9 connector. In my haste to build the cable, I put in R4. I installed WinALDL to my laptop, and tried it on the truck. It didn’t work so I removed R4, but still didn’t work. I checked R2 and saw 6v from the pc and 2v to the transistor. I added a 12v line and moved R2 to that. It still didn’t work, so at last I tried a different Baud rate. There are only 2 Baud rates in the software,2400 and 4800, the higher one worked.
I ran the datalogger and it saved to a text document. The header line wraped around to two lines, and the data columns below were hard to match to the header. I selected all and pasted to a spreadsheet where everything went to the correct place. I’m not sure what to do with all that data. There is also a live window that they caution against looking at while driving. The live window converts the raw data to tanguble values. I still don’t know what to do with these numbers though. There is also a dash display that is easy to use that includes speed and RPM.
I’m thinking it wouldn’t be too difficult to build a dedicated digital display for the speedometer and tachometer.
I was looking for a connector for the ALDL. I did find the female connector as is in the truck. I contacted the vendor and they sent a technical request to the manufacturer as to what the male counterpart is. I’m still waiting for a reply. I only used 2 wires to the ALDL and a third wire for 12v, but a connector would be nice.