I have a friend who swears that his ‘97 E300 doesn’t have a scan port under the dash. I know my ‘96 E300 has one. Did MB do something different in ‘97. He says that his only has the large round port under the hood. What say you?

The one 97 I have looked at that closely had one in the same place as the 98 I later owned.

And that place would be?

By the left knee under the dash. There's a cover over the port and could easily be overlooked.
I think the location is in owners manual. Try that.
Roddy

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I knew where it was, but my friend wanted to argue that his ‘97 didn’t have one inside the car. He swore his only had the multi pin plug under the hood. Thanks for the replies. He finally admitted today that he didn’t bother to look because the mechanic that is working on it told him he needs a special piece of expensive equipment to do diagnostics. Yes, that’s partially true. I kept telling him that he could buy a cheap scan tool and retrieve the codes himself. What do I know though? LOL!!!

On my 97 SL320 and C280 the OBD port is just above the throttle peddle under a flip cover. ( assuming a left hand drive car ) I'm pretty sure my 97 E320 parts car has the port in the same location and I'd expect the E300 to be in the same place. All of my cars have Bosch ME 2.0 / ME 2.1 engine computer

The in car OBD port only gets you to the engine computer, all others are accessed through the under hood 38 pin connector. There are 38 to OBD adapters however this only gets you to the engine computer.

For 98 ish + , the OBD port was used for all computers and the 38 pin under hood went away.

I have a 99 e300 and my car has the obd2 port and the 38 pin port. This car is a turbo diesel.
Roddy

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A generic scan tool will only be able to pull very basic emission related codes from the OBD port. You will need a SDS system hooked up to the port in the fuse box to access all the modules and codes.