I'd like to get started playing with OBDII and see if my car (2002 Maxima) will report anything useful. But I still have a couple of questions.

1) according to obdii.com :

J1850 VPW--The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 2, 4, 5, and 16, but not 10.
ISO 9141-2--The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 4, 5, 7, 15, and 16.
J1850 PWM--The connector should have metallic contacts in pins 2, 4, 5, 10, and 16.

But my car's connector has pins: 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16. Do I have a mutilated ISO since I'm missing pin 15? (It's also only one pin shy of J1850 VPW) The top of that page says:

Pin 15 - ISO 9141-2 L Line

Sounds important, is it?

Edit: Nevermind, I just found this comment that says it's OK to be missing pin 15.

2) The ELM323 looks like it's just the chip. Is the a recomendation on a complete cable assembly that I can just plug one end into the OBDII port and the other into the empeg?

I don't have any OBD experience, but I like puzzles. I'd like to see how much info I can get with freediag and go from there.