Strange device/switch under the hood
 

My CD manuals that I ordered from Ebay are cr*p, total waste of money, so, what is that rotary switch, ON/OFF on top of that small aluminium box on the firewall by the computer? There is also another cutesy box with a clear plastic lid that has a fuse under it - sorry, I thought I could spare you all these cheesy questions, given that I would have a manual that works, but there are more of these to come yet!

Can you post some pictures?

in the case of that unit the on/off or I/O is misleading, rather than turning something on or off , if you turn the knob in the off direction it will remove the unit by releasing the actual module inside.
to return it to its connected state, simply set it in place and turn to the right and it will connect the relay and lock it in place. the relay inside is actually called a Mas relay and conrols several functions including fuel pump relay, air injection compressor and A/C compressor actuations. i believe the box with the clear lid that you refer to is the OV relay. what manual did you buy? most have a component locator for electrical items

That's great information, thanks!

The manual is a two-cd set, if it will actually run it must be loaded every use, has diagrams that were done with a crayon, crashes, gives you a 'black screen' and generally was a very poor decision.

I am looking again, will probably buy the other, more expensive cd that looks like a MB original or clone.

Would sure be nice to stumble on a set of paper manuals in a garage sale or something.

Just to warn you, even the original MB manuals like to crash.

There is a link around here somewhere to an alternate index system that someone built for it, makes it a LOT more useful.

I don't know about the crayon work in a manual though, I haven't seen or heard of that one before.

I didn't describe that very well - when I got my first computer in the early 80s it did not even come with a hard-drive. You had to swap floppies back and forth as you worked. These illustrations are so crude and low res that they could fit dozens of them on one floppy. I can't even think in numbers that tiny, any more, with pre-Pentium processors (80186??) and hard-drives smaller than 1 MB.

That's what these "manuals" are like, I'll bet even MB didn't use these. My 2 cds probably have every car ever built on them as you get a very wide choice, just too bad that they are so crappy.