So...... My friend and i are thinking of doing a car pc for my TJ.

Catch is, i want to do it with an EeePC. Anyone think its possible to fit a 701 EeePC into the dash of a TJ?

That would be a pain. Also the 701 is pretty underpowered, and not a great deal of storage. Would be better off building a mini ITX case really. The eee is good at what it was made for, surfing the net, but not much else. I hardly even use mine anymore.

See, i only paid $50 for it. So i dont mind modding it. If i wanted to build a PC for it, it would cost me a heck of a lot more

Would be a piece of cake to put the 701 in your dash, was going to do the same with mine till I realised my brother stole it and took it to Brisbane with him.

There are also touch screen kits out on eBay for the 701's so you could have a pretty pimpin setup going.

Fair enough then. I'd just buy the biggest SD card you can find and mount it to the C: drive, fill it with music, run a 3.5mm audio cable from the headphone jack to the AUX of your headunit (assuming you have one) then chuck the bugger in the glovebox. Thats the easiest way.

Yeaha i was going to do the touch screen mod to it. My only concern is fitting it in under the air-conditioner

Would be a piece of cake to put the 701 in your dash, was going to do the same with mine till I realised my brother stole it and took it to Brisbane with him.

There are also touch screen kits out on eBay for the 701's so you could have a pretty pimpin setup going.

Still doesn't change the fact they are so underpowered. Even clocked back up to proper speed, it only runs around 966mhz, fine for just mp3s probably, but might struggle with a GPS program and or videos at the same time. Eees also suffer from heat issues, so it would want to be in a well ventilated place.

I was thinking of mounting my h/u under the double-din so that way im only using the eeepc as the gps/vids

Still doesn't change the fact they are so underpowered. Even clocked back up to proper speed, it only runs around 966mhz, fine for just mp3s probably, but might struggle with a GPS program and or videos at the same time. Eees also suffer from heat issues, so it would want to be in a well ventilated place.

Yeah they aren't the best little machines, but if you want to work with what you have, they aren't a bad place to start.

If it were me, I'd be stripping off the shell of the eeepc, fabricating a little cage for it, 80mm fan mounted to that. Use the current 7 inch screen coupled with a touch screen mod. I reckon they wouldn't do that badly with the GPS either with a slimmed down version of XP.

I ran a 1.3Ghz Celeron in my Car PC for over 18mths, never had any performance issues with it. Also had one of these 701s for a while and it runs XP just fine, and didn't have trouble playing videos, music, whatever. It'll be fine, and for $50, awesome!

As for a fan, my Car PC made do with the tiny 1" fan on the CPU and that was it, never had issues with it overheating, even in the heat of summer with the car sitting in a carpark heating the boot nicely.

Geez people.... he is just going to run some music & videos with it, why the hell do you need anything more then Atom CPU??? as much i hate intel its a very capable processor, i do own one but in a dell mini....

Since when does GPS or videos require a lot of resources??? My 3 year old O2 pocket pc runs TOM TOM just fine & thats with 64mb of ram! For car needs you dont need anything else

Pair ir up with bigger capasity solid state hard drive & off you go.

I would invest in a nice USB sound card, I would be pretty safe in assuming that the sound card in the eeePC would be garbage.

Also, you can hook up some USB volume and some track controls (Forward/backward skip pause etc.) pretty easily since you wont have a touchscreen.

Sounds like a pretty cheap option for starters.

I would invest in a nice USB sound card, I would be pretty safe in assuming that the sound card in the eeePC would be garbage.

Also, you can hook up some USB volume and some track controls (Forward/backward skip pause etc.) pretty easily since you wont have a touchscreen.

Sounds like a pretty cheap option for starters.

Im thinking abiut getting a powered USB hub, hook up a gps receiver, soundcard, maybe portable hdd and run a usb to the glove box for uploading files.

My mate is currently modding his eeepc as a tablet with a touchscreen mod on it. I was thinking due to space, to take the screen out of the case and have that seperate? Possibly put it in some kind of pocket to protect it.

The real issue with this is how to actually mount it to the dash, thats why i was thinking of removing the screen from the case

yeah, mounting it might be fun.
Make sure you do a bit of planning before you get started.

I bought an 8" screen, really should have bought the 7" as the 8 didn't really fit. But hey, I thought bigger is better.

Long story short, I had to rip most of the center console out to get it in there.

In the end, its much more secure than it would have been, take me about 30mins or so to get it out without damaging it.

Will be a big job to put it back to stock if ever I wanted to sell it.

Might have to pull all the center console out again soon to paint it, as I stupidly painted it all bright blue, which is a bit much to tell ya the truth. Haven't decided on whether to go the gloss black or the Silver to match car colour yet tho.

Anyone got any thoughts on how to mount the screen in the dash?

This is my largest concern!

screws?

or duct tape?

Geez people.... he is just going to run some music & videos with it, why the hell do you need anything more then Atom CPU??? as much i hate intel its a very capable processor, i do own one but in a dell mini....

Since when does GPS or videos require a lot of resources??? My 3 year old O2 pocket pc runs TOM TOM just fine & thats with 64mb of ram! For car needs you dont need anything else

Pair ir up with bigger capasity solid state hard drive & off you go.

701 isn't an atom. Its a Celeron M 900 underclocked to 630mhz. Easy enough to clock it back up with software tools, but still nowhere near 1.6Ghz. It will be interesting to see how it goes with all the USB gear hanging off it, I might slowly come around to this idea...

screws?

or duct tape?

Rofl that would be interesting. My mates coming over on Tuesday to help me put W7 on as i dont have a usb DVD.

So ill update later on in the week on ideas.

So my mate never actually turned up..... But, ive been thinking about how to power this. For anyone else that has a carPC out there, how do you power yours? Do you have it running off of the battery and have it go into standby? Or what else have people done for this?

Also, we've worked out that i would be able to mount just the screen outside the case to reduce the width.

I used an M2-ATX 160W PSU, ran straight off the 12V from the battery, and could tolerate voltages between 6 and 32V (for example when starting the engine). Had a builtin shutdown controller too, so it would turn the PC on/off automatically using the ACC wire.

I'm using M2-ATX as well and no problem so far. It is now available locally at mini-box.com.au.

for the eee laptop, just get a car adaptor and use that, wire it in or something. The beauty of the eee (or any laptop) as a carpc, is the battery and built in psu, plug/wire it in the ciggy lighter, and it will do the rest on its own.

I used an M2-ATX 160W PSU, ran straight off the 12V from the battery, and could tolerate voltages between 6 and 32V (for example when starting the engine). Had a builtin shutdown controller too, so it would turn the PC on/off automatically using the ACC wire.

Same and it works brilliantly. It also has a built in voltage sensor that detects if your battery drops too low and turns the computer hard off so you still have enough juice to start the car. This saved my battery a few times, you can tell in the morning when it's happened caus thare's just enough juice to crank the car over lol

I'm looking at selling my carPC soon caus i've got a new car and goin down a different route with it, if you're interested keep an eye on the for sale thread...

So how do these M2-ATX things actually work? How would i go about installing one? Is there anything similar out there that is not as expensive?/

So, my mate has come up with a nifty idea.

Hard wire in the lappy. But set up a switch that A) cuts the power B) continuous power C) Only powers when ignition is on.

Ideas on what gauge wiring to use? I currently have about 3m of 4g wiring in my room. Too much?

Same and it works brilliantly. It also has a built in voltage sensor that detects if your battery drops too low and turns the computer hard off so you still have enough juice to start the car. This saved my battery a few times, you can tell in the morning when it's happened caus thare's just enough juice to crank the car over lol

Mine never even let it get to that point, I know the system had trouble shutting down a few times over the 18mths I had it running since it would cold boot (which mean it was hard shutdown and didn't go into standby), and the car started no differently. Really is the best solution, much better than hooking up manual switches and stuff.

My main problem though is the fact that i dont really want to spend $150 on one. Also, my mate seemed to think that they are used primarily for mini-pc's, rather then a laptop like what i want to do... This true?

Alrighty an update.

My mate just reminded me that he has a second screen so that sorts one issue out. We've decided to run a smaller gauge wire from the battery, 8/16 gauge maybe? Nothing big as it shouldnt draw too much power. Run it too a really that does:

A) Take power from the battery
B) Runs to the Lappy
C) Only runs power to the lappy when the ACC is on

This way, i wont be running my battery down when the car is off. I will also have the lappy going into standby after 2 mins without use. So again, it doesnt run its own battery down.

The main concern we have atm, is worrying about how we're going to mount the screen and also where to put the lappy case. The wires that connect the screen are about maybe 2-3" long, so we're still unsure as to wether or not thats enough for the lappy to sit sideways in the console.

But, he just told me he has an idea as to how to extend it, so we may be able to mount it somewhere with a bit more ventilation. Still needs to get back to me about it.

Go to ford wreckers or dealer and try the screen surround they use for there in-dash screen in the BA-BF,

Should nicely cover the back of it up and look factory, just hated looking down at my screen, preferred it to be eye level ish, save a crash lol.

Bit of subject,I have a eee on Linux....have tried all the ways mentioned on the net to run XP without success...if could get it going would us as my car pc.anyone had any success doing this?