Well hi there.. As I've mentioned previously here and there, I'm keen on making a "Carputer" or Car PC. For those playing at home who don't know what the idea is it's somewhat like this.

Take your PC at home, put it in your car, the end.. Imagine the benefits! Porn on the run! (Oh and basically unlimited music capacity :P)

Well I had scored from work a Socket478 Intel board, 2GHZ Celeron processor and 512 of DDR to get me started but until the other week when a kind soul decided to help me out.. for FREE.. that's right, check this out!

Saintsong P4 Latte Plus! The worlds smallest P4 PC. 2.4GHz Celeron (i know, i know) 4 USB 2 ports, 3 1394(firewire), "VGA"(D-sub) S-video and RCA video outs (Yes, three!), Dolby 5.1 surround! with digital out (SPDIF), 56K modem, 10/100LAN, PS2 ports, TWO line out's not inc Digital... even a dang parallel port! (No comm ports or wireless though) Throw this with my USB wireless 'dongle' and it'd fit comfortable under the glovebox kick panel! Wireless too so I can enjoy hotspots or update/configure once the car is in the garage at home via VNC/RA! (Already use wireless modem/router)

Consider this the tuning stage.
http://web.aanet.com.au/naa/cpc/cpc1.jpg

80GB 2.5" Seagate Laptop HDD, 768MB of DDR (333) Ram (video shares)

Internal shot, just finished giving it a 24hr endurance test, passed without burning the house down.
http://web.aanet.com.au/naa/cpc/cpc2.jpg

Look at how small this bugger is! It'd be almost on 1 Din size! Vs a normal thick CD case & 20" LCD in the BG
http://web.aanet.com.au/naa/cpc/cpc3.jpg

Back shot showing the plethora of ports, more than my P4 desktop!
http://web.aanet.com.au/naa/cpc/cpc4.jpg


So what do you all think? Jealous? Oh that's right, it already runs 12v too!

Any tips from those who've run one before? Circuit breakers?

Also, what sort of current can a stock magna alternator put out? From what I can make of it, I'll need a 10A fused 12v power supply which means I'll have to run the carpc straight from the battery so I can leave the PC on and update it via the wireless and It'll have to be shut down from either remote admin (when going in via network) or a touchscreen that will be coming after Xmas (now that mongrel is so close AGAIN!)..

Yet to meter this mains PSU, I'm thinking with 4 pins it possibly breaks down the power to 12v and 5v rails as the CPC doesn't have any sort of heatsinked transistors inside that it'd need.. A closer inspection is due. To the multimeter batman!..


Which is downstairs! Doh!

Wow, that thing is fricking tiny. You will have to watch the heat the CPU generates though. If it gets to hot, you may have to upgrade the mobo and CPU to something which doesn't draw as much power and thus doesn't get as hot.

Yeah cooling is my first main concern next to those damned Viagra emails..

CPU downgrade is possible but the m/board is pure proprietary work, there's no way I can get anything else to fit in it, even the micro VIA boards we use are half as big again.

I could possibly run another 12V fan (80MM case fan) on top of the CPU fan, just like a Hi-clone electronic supercharger! Pushing more air into it. From what I've been told though these little puppies are used as 'ad boxes' running plasmas and LCD's in shopping centers etc so they have a pretty cushy life running vids and living in air con.. possibly a mini (60MM) heatsink fan on the exit to suck air too.. My options are ever growing and quickly changing :/

It could even live under the parcel shelf in the boot sandwiched between my enormous DD box and the response amp :P Hell, I could mount it IN the DD box :P next to Jimmy Hoffer and Big Foot.

Mounting-wise I have also noticed that all the venting is on one side so I think that it shouldn't be too bad with two square brackets made up to slide it into and as long as the ventilation is good it should be sweet. Also it will always be getting some good air, if it's warm outside I'll have the air on and if it's cold I'll have a window open or vented air coming in, I might try and run some hosing from a foot vent to it, may help in really hot days. I can only start to imagine the dust it will start to collect.. Maybe it needs to be bank-robber spec'd (in a stocking!).

Also checked the power pack that's in it now, 19v@6A = 12v10a is perfect. I'm lucky that it's that tolerant, Now I just need to run it on something lower to see if it can handle 12v! (rather then a perfect 13.8)

perhaps you need some sort of startup/shutdown controller? don't want to sit in your car waiting for it to shut down. Alternatively, you could shut it down before you park your car..other than that...yeah! that's practically a laptop with a whole bunch of extra ports and no battery or screen!

Make sure to get a touch screen.

If its not a touch screen, it has to be the most irritating system ever.

i actually pulled mine out because of this

Also if you are worried about heat, would mounting it tucked away in your boot be the best choice? I would go for under the seat or something so its in a cooler environment. also care full about mounting stuff on sub boxes - vibration. But dude, it looks and sounds awsome hey, nice score!! be sure to post up when its running in the car!

So what do you all think? Jealous? Oh that's right, it already runs 12v too!

:rant: :rant: :rant: :rant:

You may still need to invest in a more stable power supply than your car's 12v (which fluctuates), to keep noise out of your system. Nevertheless looks very nice.

You will have more than enough current to run this from the battery/stock altenator, this won't use that much juice.

But if you want to run it for extended periods of time with the altenator off, suggest dual battery (good for noise isolation) or a dry cell/optima single setup.

Peace

Tim

I call first dibs on it if you give up.

I call first dibs on it if you give up.

Never!

Touch screen is a must, I will wait longer rather than buying a non-touch, although we build touch screens at work so I may just be able to make one.. I'd rather something already done though, I still have to do my job after all! I've seen sunvisor 7" touch screens, that would be cool as I don't want it to be open all the time, plus on the big drive once or more a year the mrs can watch divx stuff, tv eps and the rest..

As for cooling, I was only kidding about mounting it in the sub-box, the poor little thing would get beaten to death, surface mounted components everywhere like ants! The boot has much more air to cool the box vs under the seat. Realistic mounting points would be either in the boot or under the glovebox, there's a heap of room under there and I could route some air from the air system to it also.

PSU would be an issue.. Perhaps I could use some sort of capacitance to deal with fluctuations? Any ideas? and perhaps I might have to rig up some sort of power stepper to bump it from 12-14v to something like 16-18v, Will have to investigate this also..

and Eric, I was thinking of just having a button near the keys etc that will be an extended power button, i've already set the bios to soft on/off so that'd be pretty easy.. Although a timer of some sort to cut the power after so long just incase it stalls during shut-down would be good also.. My Eclipse deck has MP3 and AUX in (which is where the Carpc comes in) at the moment we use our N95's to play MP3's if it's not on CD so I think that it wont be used ALL the time, but then again, it just may as I'll probably get too lazy to use cd's and just use winamp on random.

I had thought about using my laptop in the car as I really have no other use for it but this is about twice as powerful and twice as small and as you said, a LOT more ports.. perfect! Might need to get myself some sort of mini BT keyboard and mouse and I can even play games on the run! :P My now Carpc is faster than my mums desktop.. I find that rather amusing.

We had an Acer just like this thing come in the other day. Used a notebook HDD and Notebook RAM. Bloody small thing, about the size of a CDROM drive. I thought to myself that it would make a mad carputer if I was into that sort of thing.

So what do you all think? Jealous? Oh that's right, it already runs 12v too!

:rant: :rant: :rant: :rant:
hahaha it's a nice set up i'll give you that, but my setup can do anything that can do, bar internet browsing on the fly (but i doubt you will either) and mine is instant boot/shutdown new headunits have heaps of features these days....


and as for hdd's in cars i'll stick to removeable media thanks (i do have 2 ipods and also flash memory in the car audio set up) but DVD audio wins hands down, nothing like watching the film clip to go along with the song

hahaha it's a nice set up i'll give you that, but my setup can do anything that can do, bar internet browsing on the fly (but i doubt you will either) and mine is instant boot/shutdown new headunits have heaps of features these days....


and as for hdd's in cars i'll stick to removeable media thanks (i do have 2 ipods and also flash memory in the car audio set up) but DVD audio wins hands down, nothing like watching the film clip to go along with the song

Hmm.. Yours will have cost an ****-load more than mine though! Who has 2 ipods, seriously, TWO? One for each tux Bond?

HDD in the car will be fine, as long as I don't exceed 2G's... But I have plenty of them so you could say they're kind of expendable.. I just need to make a master and ghost them off and make a fleet.. Problem is this Latte DIDN'T come with a cd/dvd rom, so I have no way of actually getting XP on there, as you know, once you install it on from one system you can't just throw it into another because it'll blue screen and I can repair the install because of no cd/dvd rom drive, but I think someone at work can hook that up so hopefully it'll be a one night install them ghost and I'm off and racing.

Now I have acquired a projector it'll have to take to cinema duties for a while until that touch screen comes along. 2mx2m TV? Is Nice!

Hmm.. Yours will have cost an ****-load more than mine though! Who has 2 ipods, seriously, TWO? One for each tux Bond?

HDD in the car will be fine, as long as I don't exceed 2G's... But I have plenty of them so you could say they're kind of expendable.. I just need to make a master and ghost them off and make a fleet.. Problem is this Latte DIDN'T come with a cd/dvd rom, so I have no way of actually getting XP on there, as you know, once you install it on from one system you can't just throw it into another because it'll blue screen and I can repair the install because of no cd/dvd rom drive, but I think someone at work can hook that up so hopefully it'll be a one night install them ghost and I'm off and racing.

Now I have acquired a projector it'll have to take to cinema duties for a while until that touch screen comes along. 2mx2m TV? Is Nice!

i'm not having a go at your system i was thinking about doing it once myself.... who has 2 ipods... i have one and my gf has one.... i personally hate them thats why my music is on dvd and flash memory (usb drive) cost more? nope i dont thinks so.... i have a keen eye for a bargain ;)

i also have a copy of xp pro sp2 that you can install on any computer no issues unlimited licences no product key needed, i have been running it for years and have installed it on atleast 20pc's you need something like that.. it came from a friend who got it from a seceret place lol

hes saying he wont be able to just install it on another comp, same hdd, and put it in the new comp (drivers will be ****ed)...i think everyone has access to xp pro corporate edition (no license key required)...

PSU would be an issue.. Perhaps I could use some sort of capacitance to deal with fluctuations? Any ideas? and perhaps I might have to rig up some sort of power stepper to bump it from 12-14v to something like 16-18v, Will have to investigate this also..

i'm using a e-vectra for mine - with a lapper hard drive, you dont even need to feed in 12v... it'll survive cranking without the computer crashing as the board only uses 5v and the regulator for it is on the board.

having said that, if your keen to feed in 16v or so to be safe, use a lapper powersupply for car. jaycar sell them. i used this for when i was playing around with 3.5" hard drives in there.

evectras normal input is 19v.

got everything but the touchscreen.

Carputer season has begun eh. This board certainly isnt the smallest mobo around but maybe smallest p4. P4 imo are not needed in this environment, but you have a reasonably low power cpu so it should be fine. All this carputer talk is making me want to thread my upgrade too.

Some years ago I put a carputer in my camry for 0$ from a secondary house computer. It ran off an inverter and via a 15" LCD which I never ended up mounting. I took it out in the end cause I found it real hard to use a mouse while driving, also the screen sat in the passenger seat and mum wanted the computer back lol. But I did have it running for several trips and I thought it was pretty cool accomplishment at the time.

i'm not having a go at your system i was thinking about doing it once myself.... who has 2 ipods... i have one and my gf has one.... i personally hate them thats why my music is on dvd and flash memory (usb drive) cost more? nope i dont thinks so.... i have a keen eye for a bargain ;)

Take it easy champ, i was only kidding. You can own an many ipods as you want, ok?

The problem with XP is it uses the drivers you install (and it installs itself) as markers so you can't just throw the hard drives around in machines willy nilly, you need to 'repair' the install if you want to take it from one machine to another and for that I need a bootable XP cd, Lucifer PM'd me a good idea though which I thought I'd share to show people how smart he is.

Install 98, which does not use hardware markers, Copy the i386 folder from the XP install CD onto the root of the HDD and install XP once on the latte, problem with that is... well there is no real problem apart from I'm lazy and it's awkward trying to get the video cable out from the LCD and plug into again, I feel like I'm going to snap it.

Bigs, That's a good accomplishment, but I want a fully functioning, pro install, which is why a 7 or 8" T/screen LCD will be used, the mrs said she likes sun-visor LCD's and I've seen them T/screen which means we can both use it to control, it'll just mean a piggyback of the RCA cable, I can just make another and it has plenty of USB ports for the touch controls.

Once I get XP installed onto this little maggot I'll have to hook it up to an adjustable PSU to see how little it really needs, hopefully like BCX7 it'll just have a regulator to drop input voltage down to 5v.

My my this thread has certainly got more interest than I thought it would.

Lucifer PM'd me a good idea though which I thought I'd share to show people how smart he is.
Awwwhhhh I'm not just a pretty face after all :redface:

visor screens are illegal now... just a 'heads up'

Can't say I'm surprised, they aren't exactly the safest idea.

yeah i knew they weren't the best but safe? Sun visors in general are pretty good for decapitations. Shame they're illegal, now it's either a 1 din fold out or something mounted in the glove box which is a bad idea trying to use whilst driving. Damn, does anyone know how to 'hit enter' on an n95?

Damn, does anyone know how to 'hit enter' on an n95?

Hit enter? how do you mean? I've got an N95 here.

Hit enter? how do you mean? I've got an N95 here.

There is no enter, where's the enter? Enter as in line space, the return key, you know, enter!

There is no enter, where's the enter? Enter as in line space, the return key, you know, enter!

Oh I get what you mean now, I thought you meant like to press buttons and stuff :P

If you go into the add symbol screen (press * while entering text) then select the last symbol (the bent arrow).

Oh I get what you mean now, I thought you meant like to press buttons and stuff :P

If you go into the add symbol screen (press * while entering text) then select the last symbol (the bent arrow).

sometimes you can hold down a button as well

Actually you can install xp onto a hdd and then throw it in another computer. I have done it a few times when putting in a new motherboard ( but formatting it later anyways ).

Once its installed, and into windows, dont give it a chance to install anything just shut it down.

If your mini pc needs drivers xp doesnt have, just throw them on a USB sitck.

Bigs, That's a good accomplishment, but I want a fully functioning, pro install, which is why a 7 or 8" T/screen LCD will be used, the mrs said she likes sun-visor LCD's and I've seen them T/screen which means we can both use it to control, it'll just mean a piggyback of the RCA cable, I can just make another and it has plenty of USB ports for the touch controls.


It was an accomplishment at the time, im on my 3rd carputer install now and installing a 15.4" touchscreen in my console atm. Careful about choosing your touchscreens, some models drivers dont except dual touchscreen and can conflict.

That PC looks almost small enough to fit in a DIN slot. Wouldnt that save alot of thinking and modding.

That PC looks almost small enough to fit in a DIN slot. Wouldnt that save alot of thinking and modding.

But if i need the din for the touchscreen then I can't just throw away my eclipse!

nick just a idea i was reading your thread and u were talking about on /off okay i don't know much about this but as for you turn on / off situation what about something like a modified turbo timer so that way the minute u turn the car of it's set for 1-3-5 min to turn of .. i am sure u could modify the turbo timer to do something like that ? i don't know just my idea

Or just go to www.mp3car.com and read about the various off-the-shelf startup/shutdown controllers available... Or even a car pc power supply with built in controller (M2-ATX comes to mind, but there are a few others)..

Or even a car pc power supply with built in controller (M2-ATX comes to mind, but there are a few others)..

I've got one of those and they are quite good. Hoping to put mine in my car soon.

I had one of these in my KL. http://www.brashimports.com.au/P0701A.htm
Its a good unit but my new car has the stereo too integrated to use it.

bigs, do you mean youre putting a 15.4" touchscreen in the hole in your avatar? what about air con and the rest? thats going to be a massive screen, same size as my laptop, keen to see updates

yes its replacing everything, air con vent will be redirected for additional cooling. Climate control is in the glove box for now, but eventually the carputer will control climate. The bezel incorporates a double din. The most important part of my new screen is it will be sunlight readable.

sounds cool, make a thread with progress as things come along

sounds cool, make a thread with progress as things come along

He's got one going over on MP3Car.