[Beav]

There really is no such thing as a 'plain vanilla' OBDI (a misnomer, by the way) for Japanese or european cars. There were some scanners labeled as "Generic', but that term was associated with the fact that they did Ford, GM and Chrysler and little else, if anything (maybe some re-badged imports.) If you should happen to find some off-the-wall scanner that will do pre-OBDII Japanese cars it is doubtful that it will hook up to a Subie. Toyota, Nissan and Honda are the most likely to be found, as they made a few more of them.

I do driveability repairs on all makes, every day I'm at work. I don't have an Asian cartridge for any of my scanners, it really doesn't pay to buy them, let alone update them each year. If someone were to bring their '92 SVX in to me tomorrow I'd pull the codes the same way anyone else here does. A scanner might do it quicker, but not $500 - $1500 quicker. If it provided a datastream of the sensor information it could help an experienced tech, time-wise, but as I said, you soon learn to not trust that info. If you see something peculiar in the datastream you'll use a graphing multi-meter at the sensor to verify. If the same info is present at the sensor, fine, if not you have a circuit or ECU problem. Do you see where I'm going here?

You have a couple options: watch Ebay for a used pro' scanner that has a Japanese cartridge and cables included. Even the OTC and Snap-On scanners (what mechanics generally use if not hooked up with the OE setup) aren't all that great. The other alternative is to realize that a scanner only tells you what the ECU 'sees' coming in from the sensors, processes and sends back down to the data link. A lot can happen to a signal by the time it reaches the data link. Poor connections, a failing or intermittent ECU problem, etc. can send you on so many wild goose chases that you learn not to trust anything a scanner reports as gospel. You'll always verify what you see with a meter, unless you're willing to risk your reputation and your customer's money. So why not save some money and invest in a graphing multi-meter and forget the scanner? With cars all going OBDII and beyond, anything you spend on a 'OBDI' scanner will soon be money wasted anyway. There are even GMM and labscope packages available for laptops and PDAs at reasonable prices. Check out EASE software, EngineMate (labscope due in June), etc.

Just don't fall into the lump of people that think that diagnosing auto electronics is just a matter of hooking up a scanner and having it tell you what is wrong, it just doesn't work that way. I work with three different scanners (total around $8000), a Fluke Scopemeter (another $2500), a Snap-On Vantage GMM ($2200) and a Bear Pace 400 (around $40,000 when new.) I have in excess of $80,000 in personal tools and when I attend a training seminar it usually costs $150 - $300 for eight hours, and no, I don't mean college hours, I'm talking eight, sixty-minute hours. My reason for spouting all of this out is that if you buy a scanner, etc. and don't use it enough or understand what in heck you're trying to accomplish with it , you'll end up with a little plastic box, sitting in the corner collecting dust, that cost you several hundred dollars and won't even tune in an AM station.