I've tried the vag cable it didn't work for me, i did a lot of research and getting something working for my MY99 GC8 is pretty hard, unless you upgrade your ECU.

However after a lot of research I found an OBDkey works in SSM mode. I've got one and it works with torque but only shows real time information not fault codes, but that's a software (torque) thing not a hardware limit. I haven't tried SSM yet but I'm planning on doing a full write up in the near future now that my android stereo is installed.

OBDKey :: OBD Bluetooth