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Originally Posted by Dee8go
What year did MB's begin to have an interface for these code readers? Are they an actual piece of hardware or a program that can be run in a laptop? Or are there both types?
I used to assume that the computer equipment used to run diagnostics was proprietary and prohibitively expensive to buy.
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All cars sold in the US beginning with MY 1996 are required to have an OBD-II connector which reads and resets codes for the PCM. MB included, so these codes are on that port.
There is a piece of hardware involved, whether it is a complete unit or an interface to a PC running appropriate software. There's an interface chip for the latter, known as ELM. Instances of the hardware using the ELM chip are very reasonably priced. Complete units (no PC needed) are also not prohibitively expensive. I paid $90 at Autozone for a halfway decent model (Actron 9135). Of course you can spend much more and get more features. But the ELM interface chip (with appropriate software) has all the features of the best dedicated scanners.
Then there is the port under the hood (in your fusebox, perhaps). This is not OBD-II or anything standard at all, unless you count MB standards. For that one, you need an expensive system. This port has diagnostics for more than the engine.