Hi all,

I have finally got around to installing my car pc, it is almost finished I am just hooking up the DC-DC PSU I have. I am going to power my Lilliput touch screen from it. I have one power cable (+12v) running from my PSU (in the trunk) up to the front and have it connected to my Lilliput. My question is can I just simply ground the negative wire of the lilliput up in the front, or do I have to run another cable back, from my Lilliput, to my PSU and use the ground wire from my molex where I am getting my +12v from.

Hopefully I can ground it up the front and save me time and money.

Cheers.

you can use another source for ground. It's all the same

May I ask why you are using the +12v from the PSU to power the screen?
Does it not allow to use the cars power?

Yeah I can use power from the car (e.g cigarette lighter, accessory etc.) however I have read that this power is unregulated (or not regulated very well) so there can be peaks in the 12v power (e.g when cranking the engine) thus it can destroy the lcd screen or decrease its life. The PSU supplies a regulated clean +12v. Plus my screen will only turn on when my computer is on.

makes sense

i was under the impression the screen would have turned off with the computer, once the USB power d/c - that's dependent on the screen

I'm running my screen of my PSU, means that the screen powers on/off (not just going into standby) when the Car PC turns on/off. Use this arrangement in both my previous and current setups and it works really nicely.

With mine, I just ran a +ve and -ve between the screen and PSU, and hacked together a cable with a molex on one end (be sure to use the yellow for 12v and either black for ground) and the screen plug off the ciggy-lighter cable on the other.

yea definately run it off the PSU, i've currently just got mine running off the cigarette lighter power and it's shocking. It interferes with the touchscreen meaning I frequently have to turn the screen on and off to make it work, and when the car's not running, sometimes the screen's not receiving enough power and turns itself off. I'll be running mine to the PSU when I redo all my wiring and hopefully move the carPC to under the passenger seat in a few weeks...

Just finished hooking up everything today. Surprisingly everything is working flawlessly, gps, centrafuse, turning on and off with the car etc. However I am a little disappointed with the sound quality, I am assuming it is because I am using onboard sound from a mini atx motherboard. Has anyone used a usb sound card before, if so any recommendations? I would go for pci however I don't think one would fit in my case.

Thanks.

Yeah mate, I went back to onboard sound after 6mths using a PCI card and it sucks.

I have not had good experience with USB sound cards, most of them have problems resuming from hibernate correctly.

Perhaps lookout for a low-profile PCI?

yeah, i might try find a low profile sound card. Most likely I will just have to mod my case a bit, not a problem since I have all ready done a bit of hacking to it with the drill.

Why did you have to go back to onboard?

EDIT: I might take my sound card out of my main pc and try it in the carputer with the case off temporarily just to see how it sounds.

only issue ive had from my onboard sound on the asus is sometimes the sub channel drops after a power off, happened 2x since installed, a hot plug of the centre channel fixes that, mines running splits, 6x9's and 12" sub all alpine R gear

i run my screen power from up front as i dont want to stress the psu as its alread running an E4400 intel 320gb sata drive and sata burner 2gb ddr800 ram.

Hmm, I just tried to connect up my subwoofer, but nothing at all. The amp is on and everything should be connected fine. I have tried turning the gain up, setting it to line level high and low, tried connecting straight from the onboard to the sub amp, but nothing???

I am running two rca leads from my onboard sound (it is only two channel onboard sound) to my main amp, than rca out to my sub amp. I should still be able to get the subwoofer running off the onboard even though it is only 2 channel and doesn't have a dedicated sub channel shouldn't I? I am chucking in my audigy 4 card tomorrow so will see if that solves the problem and run 5.1 (seeing as I don't think its possible to do 4.1 is it?).

Thanks for any advice.

At the moment I am running a splitter off the stereo channel to get my front and rear audio.

Try the PCI card and you'll be hooked. I know I need to get mine back in :)

i have a 5ch amp to run the lot, sub wasnt doing much untill i kicked the pc into 6 channel mode im using 3x1.5m headphone to rca leads i need to change them to 3 mtr ones so i can mount my pc finally in the drivers side of the boot, as the sub is in a bigs box on the passenger side, amp is mounted similar to asylums boot install so even tho there is a sub, pc, wide amp fused distobox and alot of cables etc in the boot i still have alot of room..

im currently workin on the upfront controls now, i have gutted my ash tray and now have a usb port mounted in it along with power & reset buttons, if i can find a push on push off type button the power antenna will be wired and run from there as well.

yeah, i might try find a low profile sound card. Most likely I will just have to mod my case a bit, not a problem since I have all ready done a bit of hacking to it with the drill.

Why did you have to go back to onboard?

EDIT: I might take my sound card out of my main pc and try it in the carputer with the case off temporarily just to see how it sounds.

You might want to try this pci riser, so no need to mod your case. I got one of this in my carpc.
http://images.virtualvillage.com/006416-019/001.jpg

Nice find with the pci riser, I might look into it, but I would be a bit worried about it blocking air flow to my cpu/gpu heatsink with the sound card in place. I will suss it out tomorrow and have a good ponder on what best to do. I am loving the car pc, took a good while to install but worth every bit of time and money. Thanks for the input everyone.

Just sharing my car pc.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o248/MagnaTech07/P1000783Medium.jpg
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o248/MagnaTech07/P1000784Medium.jpg