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Diagnostic system up and running
Long time no post... again, but I have been busy on several things. Today I finally finished one of my projects, a working BMW diagnostic system / PC. This is in no regards thanks to my own efforts alone. All credit goes to a bunch of people who have worked together and shard their knowledge.

The system consists of a custom made interface board which connects to the vehicles diagnostics socket, and then the other end to a serial port on a computer. For instance a COM1 port on a Windows machine. Older vehicles like mine seems to need a genuine COM1 port, and no USB-adapters to work. I havent verified this yet, but so says the wise men (and women?).

The PC runs any Windows version. Mine was loaded with XP and the latest service pack at the moment. I just did a fresh install on an old Pentium 3 desktop box. On top of that some BMW factory interface software need to run, called EDIABAS and INPA. They can work as an interface server for the DIS. The DIS consists of a Sun OpenServer solution which runs fine in a virtual machine system like VMware Server (free). The system is called a GT1 base system, which like the names says provides a base operating system and interface for various BMW modules like the DIS and TIS (see own article about what all these abbreviations means).

Once the GT1 base system running Sun OpenServer is up and running, I had DIS Progman V39 loaded into the GT1 setup. This software piece is the actual diagnostics module which can read, program and test the various modules in your vehicle. V39 is a bit dated, so I am getting V44 which is the latest available which offers programming of modules. Later versions like V53 require a special Windows XPe enviroment called SSS to program modules in vehicles. Since V44 and later doesnt contain any usefull stuff for older vehicles like my E32 and E34 there is no need to get it either. At least not now.

This morning I had all this working thanks to a lot of people and forums. I managed to connect, read, clear and get status of most modules in my E32 750iAL. I could play around moving the seats, windows, wipers etc from the DIS station as well. A lot of errors was read out and cleared to see if they surface again. Which could indicate problems.

However there is still a long way to go, and once I get my vacation done I will write some documentation for how to make this setup work for you too. Where possible, I will help you find the necessary pieces needed to bring it all together....

Stay tuned, I think you will like this!
 
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