Help BOSCH KTS 500c

[pommbaer]

Very nice Thread!
pommbaer

[hotwheels]

Somebody help please. I have toshiba teccra 8000 installed esi with key, installed tosdriver and card still does not work. Can anybody give me advice please.
Thanks

[steppenwolf]

Somebody help please. I have toshiba teccra 8000 installed esi with key, installed tosdriver and card still does not work. Can anybody give me advice please.
Thanks

I can`t recall but I think that there is a lot adjustments that you need to make for your KTS card to work with lappy. It is hard to connect this device without some problems. Are you running win98?

[hotwheels]

Yes win09 2nd any advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[hotwheels]

sorry yes win98 2nd

[steve 06]

Hi,

Has anyone been able to get the card to work with Windows XP? Check out this utube clip of the KTS500 working in a laptop with esitronic version 2008.1 [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynduw-v21dU"]YouTube - Tos Kts500 2008.1[/ame]

[steppenwolf]

Hi,

Has anyone been able to get the card to work with Windows XP?

No chance it can run under XP. I have tried it. Very difficult to install newer versions on win98. I have bothered my self and finally after few days somehow managed to get working 2006/4 on Win98 and it also crushes very often.

[steve 06]

Hi,

Can you offer any advise or tips on how you got it to work?

Regards.

[steppenwolf]

Hi,

Can you offer any advise or tips on how you got it to work?

Regards.

Tell me for start are you installing this on laptop or desktop computer? I was busy today. Will post a little guide tomorrow.

[steve 06]

Hi,

A laptop. I may install in a desktop in the future.

Regards.

[paro44]

Afaik there are only two laptops that should work with kts500:
- compaq armada 500 (with win 95)
- toshiba tecra 8000 (with win98)

[steve 06]

Hi,

Why only these two?

[paro44]

Because of internal connection from the pcmcia slot i guess (maybe different pcmcia chipset?).
Kts500 card was mainly made for usage in an isa-to-pcmcia adapter card in a standalone pc. I have read, that only these two laptops work, but maybe i haven't read all or maybe i'm wrong.

[steve 06]

Tell me for start are you installing this on laptop or desktop computer? I was busy today. Will post a little guide tomorrow.

Hi,

Did you get a chance to put together the guide?

Regards.

[dieselnutjob]

I have a Tecra 8000 with win 98SE on it and 2007/1 working with the kts500 PCMCIA card.

Originally Bosch sold these with an ISA adaptor and that would work with any desktop PC that had an ISA slot. They were a difficult thing to set up as the card wasn't plug n play. You had to make sure that the IRQs were reserved in the BIOS, that the card was jumpered for those IRQs, and that the software was using those IRQs. I think it dated back to the Windows 3.1 way of doing thing.

Then Bosch bought out the KTS tablet PC thing which had the PCMCIA slot. This had Windows 95 on it with a special Bosch shell. They had a special recovery partition and if you ever messed it up then you could press Fsomething and it would totally rebuild itself. If the harddisk ever went out though you were stuffed.

The thing is that this special Bosch tablet PC had special PCMCIA chips and special windows drivers. If you put the card in another laptop it wouldn't recognise it. In fact I don't think that the card even conformed with the full PCMCIA spec.

Then someone realised that the Compaq Armada M700 used a similar PCMCIA chipset. In fact once I took an image of the Bosch tablet and put it on a M700 and it worked. But I couldn't upgrade it so was stuck at ESI 2005 or something.

Then someone came up with the tosktssetup for the Tecra 8000 and that's why I have one of those. I actually paid for the tosktssetup at the time. I don't think it's even a proper driver but more a patch for something else. Maybe the Tecra PCMCIA chips are a bit like that old Bosch tablet PC. I think it only supported 2007/1 which is what I have.

The ESI business model was always that Bosch forced you to upgrade every 3 months. Thay didn't want to support the old kts500 anymore though, and it doesn't support PWM, VPW, Canbus etc. They couldn't exactly kill the KTS500 users machines though, so they bought out the "final" version which I think was simply 2007/1 without the 3 month timeout, so it would just work forever until the hardware died.

I would love to try the final version on my Tecra but never managed to get a a "final" DVD.

So. My Tecra is dual boot. Win98SE normal partition and Win98SE with Bosch ESI on it.
I got it working with ESI and then booted into the other normal Win98SE and made a giant Winzip file of everything on the ESI partition (except the io.sys file).
Every three months I have to boot the normal Win98SE, knock the clock back to Jan 1st 2007, delete all the files in the ESI partition (except io.sys) and then unpack the zip file.
Then I'm good for another 3 months.

io.sys must be in the boot partition for MSDOS or it won't boot. If you ever delete/rewrite it then it won't be in the boot partition which is why you mustn't touch it.

It's a real sledge hammer approach as probably there are only a couple of files somewhere then probably need to be rewritten but I don't know what they are so I have to replace the entire OS.

It's still a good tool for older cars though.