Ross-Tech have announced a new piece of shareware today, namely VCDS-Lite Release 1.0. This is a replacement for VAG-COM 311 and 409. The text of the following email from Uwe at Ross-Tech explains all:

If you bought any hardware from Ross-Tech in the last 6 years, you don't need to read this announcement; it doesn't apply to you.

VCDS-Lite is a replacement for VAG-COM versions 311 and 409. It's intended for the excessively frugal among you who are still using ancient Ross-Tech "Dumb" interfaces from 6+ years ago, as well as the cheapskates with 3rd-party interfaces from the far east.

It's available as Shareware, just like those old versions of VAG-COM, which are NO LONGER SUPPORTED as of right now. If you're currently using VAG-COM 311 or 409, you can continue to do so until you require assistance from us, or a new activation, at which point you MUST UPDATE to VCDS-Lite.

Why this update after all these years? Several reasons:

* We got tired of all the whining that those old VAG-COM versions were difficult to get running on Windows Vista and 7. Well yeah, those old VAG-COM versions were released YEARS before Windows Vista and 7! We're good, but we're not clairvoyant. VCDS-Lite fixes that; it should work fine with ALL version of Windows from 95 through 7.

* It gets tedious constantly generating new activations for those of you who can't seem keep your PCs free of viruses. Personally, I've never had a virus on any of my PCs, but then I stay away from prOn and war3z sites. Activations (licenses) for VCDS-Lite will survive reformatting your hard drive, re-installing Windows, and just about anything else you can throw at them, except a whole new PC. Just make a back-up of your license file and keep it in a safe place.

* Lastly, there's the small matter of a trademark dispute we had with a certain car manufacturer. As of this month, we simply can't offer anything called "VAG-COM" anymore! :-O

VCDS-Lite has a bunch of other improvements as well.

* There's a built-in latency test which should make it easy to tell if something is slowing down or responses to those control modules which are "fussy" about protocol timing.

* It shows label-file names in the Auto-Scan just like VCDS has for some years now.

* It has far more label files (and thus much better documentation for many control modules) than the versions of VAG-COM which it replaces.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but I think this announcement is already long enough. So here's the link to the page where you can get VCDS-Lite:

http://www.ross-tech...-lite/download/

OK, I did almost forget this: The documentation (manual) for VCDS-Lite as well as some of the web-pages are not quite finished yet, so please be patient; we're working on them!

Best,

-Uwe-

Hi guys

Does anybody know if this can be used to activate retro fit cruise control on my Octavia 1.9tdi, if so, can you give me a step by step guide as to what to do please?

Regards

Andy

Dont know about you but I thought that email was funny

Here is the function table http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/vag-functions.html

Yes, VCDS-lite can be registered