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Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 06:30
by stormbringer
Hello there :)

I'm Martin, living in Aarhus, Denmark with my 1999 Xantia 1.8i 16V Break. There's also a missus somewhere, but she tends to not care about motors, so you'll not see much of her. In short, a house full of primadonnas and then little old me ;)

I've been a Citroën fan for pretty much most of my life - partly because my father took part in establishing a Citroën club here in Jylland back in the seventies. He only ever owned two cars - both DS'es. I followed suit by acquiring an old and battered CX Athena sometime around 1994. Athenas clearly aren't designed for the danish climate (sunroof, anyone?) so its demise came rather quickly. The Athena was followed by a CX 22TRS (no sunroof this time) which held up until sometime 2006 at which point it failed MoT. Having been divorced in 2005, no funds for cars were available, so transportation has been - well, low cost... I've worked my way through bicycles, mopeds, a motorcycle (I'll highly recommend anyone to go get one of these - they're absolutely epic fun) and recently, another Citroën.

An old, battered and almost scrap-ready Xantia Break. At least, that was what the previous owner thought - chomping at the bit to get her hands on a shiny, new, bloody expensive, boring, focusgroup-devised, middle-of-the-road-designed normality-'thing' of recent construction. One of the bland creations of PSA as it is today.

The Xantia had been sitting in the yard of our local CX-club mechanic for quite some time along with an old tractor and 'som other stuff'. I bought it, unseen, one dark night over the phone. Picked it up the next dark, rainy night and took it straight home - not even a test drive. Completely unfamiliar with anything Xantia, I didn't even manage to locate the radio (retrofit - the one with a lid in front of the actual radio. I never knew...).
Love at first sight. I mean - I went home exactly the same way the missus had driven me, but somehow it wasn't the same road. Another kind of blacktop had emerged out of thin air...

And so, my work has begun. As with all Citroëns, this one is something of a primadonna. A will of her own, rarely any logic, yet indispensable. And of course she's costing me a fortune.

Oh well.

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 06:36
by myglaren
Welcome Martin :welc:

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 07:20
by Hell Razor5543
Hello Martin, and welcome to the forum. Citroens can get people that way; find a good one and you won't want to give it up.

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 08:22
by CitroJim
Martin, excellent and a very warm welcome :D

I look forward to reading of your Citroen adventures!

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 09:05
by stormbringer
Actually, I've already been tapping from the combined pool of knowledge hereabouts - the aircon is all new to me. Never had a car with aircon before, so looking for tips & trix I found a thread or two on here that got me going in the right direction. Now, all that's missing is the final test for system leaks; electrics are all up to speed and working.

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 09:46
by wurlycorner
Welcome, look forward to hearing of your adventures :)

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 18:52
by stormbringer
wurlycorner wrote:Welcome, look forward to hearing of your adventures :)
Thanks a bundle. First adventure seems to be one telling the tale of how to install a DiagBox on a 14 years old Dell C600 WinXP box.

Uphill work so far. Got the DiagBox installed, but just about everything else with this PC gives me headaches. The DiagBox installer needs a networking card to 'bind' itself to - I assume it wants the MAC address, and the ones I have are either USB - of which there is only one - or PCMCIA, without the drivers.

Adding USB hubs etc is not an option, as I'd very much like this to be a portable machine, so I'm doing battle with PCMCIA-nics atm.

I'm close now - I've been to the car with laptop + cabling, but it eventually failed to connect/validate due to only one USB port and a need for two; one for NIC, another for the hardware probe.

Re: Scandinavia calling!

Posted: 22 Dec 2015, 18:57
by Hell Razor5543
It might be possible to get the device drivers for the PCMCIA card, if you know the make and model. Some (not all) of the major manufacturers have archives that can be accessed to get the drivers.