I few years back, all advise was to stay far away from any and all "chinese copies" of Mongoose Cables and Software. The comments were that you may end up with a very big paperweight if you ever connected the Mongoose cable to your OBD port.
So, my question is: has anything happened over the past 5-10 years?? Is there cheaper stuff out there that works?? Has anybody out there tried this or something equivalent??: Results??

https://www.jlridssddmongoose.com/ho...able-usb-16gb/

 

I think the word is still buyer beware and make certain you have an ironclad return policy if you opt to purchase one....

 

I would guess that the damage can be minimized if you use it as a READ ONLY devise?
The problem would be if you used it to configure a module and the devise failed during the procedure?

Never tried one so I can't condemn.

bob

 

I have a JLR “Mangoose” from Alibaba and it works just fine, even for programming modules. Agree with Bob, using in read only type mode would be harmless, so lower risk if the quality of the cable is in doubt.

My experience is that the reliability of the SDD software is far more an issue than the cable hardware, although it seems to run better in a Win 7 VM than it did in the XP VM I had before.

 

Also, if reprogramming hook up a hefty power supply. (Jaguar recommend something like 55A - but some have used more like 30A.)

 

Thanks for all your feed back. This may have been an exercise in futility any way as I failed to bring back an old laptop to Win 7. The reason I started looking at this was to be able to do a transmission reset/adaption.
As a side, there seems to be loads of different versions out there. Are they all backwards compatible?? I see a V158 offered that appears to run on Win10 and seem to cover X100??
I am pretty computer literate, but this one has me stumped.

 

You can run Win7 in a virtual machine and keep it all in an isolated environment.

I run all the automotive programs like that so I can set up all the goofy dependencies and leave whatever ancient versions of the software are needed to make it work without worrying about security patches. JLR gets is own VM, the Ford stuff gets another so I can set the date to 2011 so the stupid service manual will open, Durametric gets its own too. I turn off network access and restrict what drives it can see to keep it all in a safe sandbox. Plus it makes for a self contained package that I can move from one PC to another if the laptop should ever die.

VMWare Workstation Player is free for personal use.

I have v134 of the JLR software FWIW and it works great. I think it is from about 2010 or 2011 so covers the x100 completely.

 

Thanks for your feedback. I have an old Acer laptop that came with Win 7 32bit that I unfortunately updated to Win10. Has not been used for a couple of years and Acer does not have a Win 7 download anymore. We'll see what I can come up with.

 

Just leaned that my old Acer is NG. Per JLRIDSSDMONGOSE.com you need a dual core processor to run V138 on Win 7 Pro 32bit. Now, JLRIDSSDMONGOOSE.com also state that you need V138 to run on Win 7. Anything older is running on XP??
But, you are running older V134 on Win7???? What am I missing? Since I now will need to find another laptop, I surely will want a Win 7 Pro laptop and not an XP machine. I do want to make sure that I get the right stuff and version to work on my 2004.
Any help is appreciated.

 

I don’t think you are missing anything, just that these websites don’t know anything about compatibility other than what was written on the box from ford when it came out.

I’ve used the same 134 version in XP and Win7 and both work. Win7 seems to be a little more stable even. The image I am using now is Win7 Ultimate 32bit.

 

Charlie,

Just out of curiosity, does your Win7 machine have a dual core processor??

 

I am running v130 on a W7 laptop and v131 on an XP laptop as well as v145 on a W7 laptop. One Toshiba and one Dell both with different HDDs.

Wxp and W7 are easily found on Ebay for just peanuts. The issue you will find is the "not a valid installation" or words to that effect however there are ways around that.

Also run Freeze to keep the date static.

In the middle of reloading the v131 version on Wxp as for some reason I could not run the Mongoose driver yesterday.

 

The reason I asked about Win7 and Dual Core Processors is that the JLRIDSSDDMONGOOSE website states that to run V138 on Win7, you need dual core processor. Just trying to confirm before I pick up a 32bit on Ebay

 

I think you have to go with what the seller stipulates although what a dual core processor has to do with it I cannot figure. Its simply a faster processor where parallel processing can speed up certain types of instructions that are not sequentially dependent.

W7 vs Wxp does matter as well as service packs.

Anyway my Dell laptop is "Duo Cpu".

 

Yes, it's a Lenovo (Formerly Thinkpad) X220, Intel Core i5-2520M. 2 cores, 4 threads.

From a VMware perspective it counts the hyperthreading as a "core" so this laptop looks like it has 4 cores.

If you run the task manager on your upgraded win 10 laptop, what does this bit say? If the "logical processors" is 2 or more then you will be fine to run it in VMWare on that laptop.

 

Thanks for your input!

 

For what it's worth, I just tried setting the VM to 1 processor and fired up SDD. It seems to run like that and it didn't complain at me.

I didn't go so far as to try and connect to the car or do anything, but it started up ok.