My Automotive J2534 J Box's and Programming Laptop and Hardware

hey folks it's time for eagle prepper while i've got everything out of my laptop bag reorganizing stuff i thought i would just go through this and show you kind of the hardware that i have for currently programming and diagnosing with factory scan tools j boxes so you know you can get a good bi-directional scan tool and some of those can do some minor reprogramming uh you know re programming the configuration of modules programming keys and you know stuff like that but like gm when you replace a module you have to re-flash it with new software for that you're going to need a jbox some of those factories some of those scan tools come with j boxes support for doing that i don't have the boxes or anything like that i'll tell makes a j box now but those j boxes are all really expensive so i have some cheap chinese clone ones that i use and it can be a bit of a challenge to get it working sometimes so we'll start here with the laptop and this is a lenovo yoga i7 16 gig terabyte hard drive it has a terabyte micro sd and a little tiny usb reader down here this does flip over and go into a tablet mode let me put in my password here um but basically you know i just have all these different virtual machines so basically what you run into is ford is going to expect you to have a laptop that's dedicated to program and forwards and gm is going to expect you to have that and they have conflicting requirements some of them require 32 bits some of them require 64 bits i'm windows 10. some windows 7. there's even some out there that require windows xp still um and so ford's going to just expect you to have your own laptop for a program in force because they expect you to work at a ford dealership right and you just program ford's all day long but when you work on a lot of different makes and models what you do is you build these virtual machines and so you can kind of see me build one of these on my last video i'll put a link to it down below but then you can have a separate configuration just as it's needed for each thing that you want to program so i've got like my mazda ids my windows 7 gts2 with the v6 nano uh my windows 7 ford ids and my windows 7 chrysler and then on the actual laptop itself i run the techline connect which gives me access to my uh my uh sps programming and then i also run my tech to win on the laptop itself um but uh yeah i've got my mitchell on demand all data all that stuff set up on here too that all runs off of this flash drive here right off of this sd card um but it's a pretty nice decent laptop um i'm really happy i have it so a couple of things you know you may or may not need this extra storage i think it's a good idea you know it's 130 bucks for that card that little sd card you probably won't need one that's that big but you can probably buy with a 256 or 512 but it's nice to have that extra storage and then the other thing that i got for this recently is this has a usbc charger in fact this is the the microsd card reader is the only regular usb port and then on this side has the usbc for charging and a usbc for plugging stuff in and that's it you can get adapters in fact i have an adapter here somewhere i think on my iphone right and so here's one you can get this adapter that adapts it to a regular usb and that's good but you really don't want all that hanging out when you're working on cars because you'll have a tendency to bump things and break them off working on a car you'll have it propped up on top of the motor or something working on it you'll slide off and then you break your usb port and you have to worry about how you're gonna get that fixed um because they don't come with a lot of extra usb ports these days either but this is my magnetic charger so that just it just has a piece that goes in there and then it holds on with the magnet and then if i bump it or something it just comes right off which is really nice so what i've done is i've gone out and bought an actual usbc cables for all my different ends so this is a usbc to a mini uh usb not a micro mini which is what my wi-tech micro pod for mopar takes this one is a micro which is what my vci our vcx nano takes all right and i'd rather have this cable on here it's a little more flexible right if i bump it into something than having that hanging out off of a big adapter that's not flexible at all this is a usb 3.0 it's got the extra spot on there for the 3.0 part and it goes to the usbc and this is a regular usb one so this is usb type b this is for the ford ids and the gm uh mdi it's not the the it's called a bcm or something on ford but that's for ids so many acronyms to learn what this do um but then i don't i don't charge my iphone off of this often so i do have one of these little adapters on my iphone charging cable this is my magnetic charging cable for my iphone i have a similar little thing plugged into my iphone to charge it and i also keep one of these adapters that i'll get from usb 2c just in case i need to plug something else in over here and it's usbc like say i need to use the cd-rom while i got something else plugged in over here i could do that or if i need to plug one of these things into a regular computer without usbc i've got that keep a couple flash drives as much drives just to save stuff on these two are actually blank this one's got some scratch data on it and somewhere i got another one and this is a backup of my dci my uh vcx native software this is a endoscope so it's for looking down the cylinder heads on motors to see if valves are stuck or bent it's got the little mirror set up and everything on it here i got this off on amazon a long time ago it works well works good enough to see what you need to see you know this is the cd for it keep a lot of screen cleaning wipes because you have to clean your screen all the time when you're using a touch screen um i also have this usb hub adapter this has a hdmi port because i need to hook up an external monitor or hook it up to a television or something that has three usb 3.0 has this one usbc but on this one the transfer speeds are really low i think this is actually connected by a usb 2.0 and these are usb 3.0 it has two card readers in it and it has a network jack on the nwt so i have that um and somewhere i think it's still in the bag i have a network cable that i keep with me in case i need to plug into an ethernet i don't normally use that for cars got my external cd-rom drive just in case i need to get something off of a cd or dvd but that's becoming less of an issue these days like most people don't use these anymore right and my charger and whatever that but that's pretty much you know what you're looking at you know a 12 1300 computer plus all the cables accessories and everything you're probably looking at two grams you know just just calculate that you're gonna need two grand for the laptop right and uh go big or go home as far as processing power ramp and storage better to have one big laptop than to try to carry around five different smaller ones all configured different and then you gotta make sure they're all charged when you need them and it sucks when you get on site to program something and your laptop battery's dead because you left it on so this is just nicer to have one laptop to worry about so i'll kind of go through some of the uh tools that i actually have that hook into this i keep them all here in this apache case i watched the foam a long time ago but i just stuff them down in here this is my picoscope four channels really nice tool to have when you need it just takes the usb 3.0 cable oh there's my ethernet cable um i've got some the probe wires right here i've got i've got a spark plug pickup wire pick up here and i have some hantech uh low amp clamps that go on this but they're not in here um and then i've got my little thing of ends and stuff my adapters my attenuators and stuff are in there this is a little backup power cable for my power inverter this is the ford vc m2 it's a clone tool i just plug into the usb on it and you know right there hook that up to the laptop and map that port to my virtual machine and then i can program the when i program when i'm loading software on a module i run this external power source to keep it basically make sure it has power so this is a nine volt centers positive outside is negative but it can run on 5 to 32 volts and so i keep this powered separately the factory tools actually take batteries this one does not and so i keep that powered with the external power supply it's powered off the lvd2 port and i plug my laptop in and make sure it's charging and i run a battery maintainer on the vehicle while i'm programming so that makes sure all the voltages are going to stay good and strong because you don't want to crash part way through program in a module and you end up breaking a module this is my obd2 breakout box it's not one loose terminal here it's still connected but it's loose i need to go through it just put some hot glue on these and glue them all down really well but basically it's got a cable that you hook up on here and then you can pass through your obd2 port to your scan tool or whatever and you can go in here and hook on look at the cam buses and stuff like that scope into it it's a handy little tool to have really good um they make a nicer one of these um like ergo has one with all the flashy lights and stuff on it i i just got this cheap one it does the job um this is extra usb cable this is my vcx nano i'm still learning this tool right now i'm just running gds on this guy and then i use my service programming and my tech to win off of my regular gm but i believe you can buy extra licenses for this to program like land rovers and bentleys and jaguars and hondas and toyotas i'm looking into getting the honda license i emailed their support to ask him how that works they haven't emailed me back just yet but i'll let you know this is just a usb or an obd2 extension cable it's great because you can plug it in here and then you can plug this into the car um because sometimes those obd2 ports are in a place where you can't fit this so i have this extension cable and i bought this separate go with that um a couple of alligator clips and that's about it that's about what that's kind of my programming tools and really i don't even need the alligator clips in here those should be in my tool box but i use them so often that i just keep a set and i usually keep a couple of the banana clip probes in here as well but they're not in here right now but i have extras in my toolbox but that's that's all my programming equipment um that's my collection so far it's not the greatest collection but it's my collection right it's what i have so um yes i'd like to get a card back or a through tech um you know or even an autel or a bosch um j box that can run with multiple softwares and stuff but i don't i don't have a few thousand dollars to drop on that crap so this is what i got right now and uh i'll look at expanding this as i need to and as as i use a tool so much that i break it or i need to upgrade to a better one it's good i made my money back out of it now i'm ready to buy it real quick right that's the way i look at it's the way i do tools in general buy the cheap one use it till it breaks if you use it until it breaks it means you use it enough to afford a good one if you use it once and you never use it again that sits in your toolbox you just save all that money over buying a good one that's the way i look at it so uh but yeah that's i like this case really well actually um i don't think this side things are really necessary i normally just clip them on the top and carry it but this is the apache something or another the apache 4800 from hardwood freight works good i think it's based off of like a pelican case type of design but it seems like it's good it's about looking case to me but yeah so that's what i got i'll talk to y'all later um i can't really show you too much of the software because there should be some legal issues there for me um i don't want to get into legal trouble so but yeah um you're going to have some money wrapped up in this and you're going to have a lot of time wrapped up and getting these tools working and figuring them out so be prepared for that and even if you go with factory software you're just going to have a lot of time you know a lot of time learning that specific makeup models programming technique how they with the acronyms they use what websites you go to how you buy the software how you install it how you download it and you know that they're all very different and it takes time it just takes time to learn it all and it's all different so you have to learn it there's no standards they don't just have like an ethernet cable and you plug in there and load the files from windows right it'd be nice if they did it'd be nice if they were more standardized like pcs are but they're not every manufacturer has their own way of tackling that that football burger right they got their own way and uh you just have to learn their way of doing it anyway i'll talk to y'all later just time your frugal preparation one other thing that you're going to need is an external drive and for as much data as i have on these each of those like windows images are like 30 or 40 gigs right so it's a lot of data to back up now i use a program called drive snapshot and it just basically takes an image or the whole computer puts it on this drive this is a usb 3.1 enclosure you can transfer data up to 10 gigabits a second in reality this backs up six or seven gigabytes a minute i have a mushkin reactor 500 gig solid state drive inside of here um backing this up over my network it takes six hours backing this up to here takes 20-25 minutes um and then you can do differential backups every time you make little changes but i have a video where i go through uh doing a backup and restores on these and i will link that video down below but you're going to want to back up the nice thing about running everything in virtual machines is the virtual machines you can restore those and set them up on any other laptop so if this laptop crashes and burns i can restore all those virtual machines off of here put them on a new laptop and i'm good to go you can get the extended warranty or the square warranty on the laptop but they're not going to cover your data and all your time you have in setting all this up so this is a good investment and you can get a standard the western digital passport rotational drive it's just going to take longer to back it up but you can let it sit overnight and back up so that's what i have um i have a a server that i can keep my backups on as well so i can plug this into my other workstation and just let that copy while i'm at work and so i have a i have a backup in two places on this drive and on my server and you know just keep backups of your stuff that's all i'm saying all right i'll talk to y'all later it's time for real prepper

Channel: FrugalPrepper's Garage and Garden

Views: 3,470

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Id: LuEtfQ8VuZw

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021