Carputers

[tng21]

Havin a alpine flip screen in me car along with a mp3 disc changer, i wondered how hard is it to make a computer go inside the glove box out of old pc parts?

I know couple of people that had computer bits layin about spare so thought i might be able to make up what i need to put one on my screen, hard drive or something for then holding all the music and films etc.

What would i need?

[Dom]

Old PC parts = bad

They tend to be high power consumption, slow (depending on age) and you need to find a 12v to ATX PSU.

If I was to build one now, I'd simply buy an Acer Revo 3600 or 3610 for £146 delivered (Ebuyer), bung on a 19V Car lighter to Laptop adapter and a USB video output device. For your money you'd get a wireless PC with a 160Gb HDD, 1Gb ram, Linux, ION chipset so full 1080P HD with graphics acceleration and its got a laptop hard drive which is a lot more robust than a 3.5" one.

In fact I liked the Revo so much I bought one for use as my home entertainment system.

[djivesp]

Thats some good gen dom
You can use old pc parts though but like said, they're not ideal mostly down to how power inefficient old hardware is.
Something around 2ghz though is perfect for running front end software like centrafuse, preferably with integrated graphics so you're not using more power for a graphics card.

One of these for power, it has clever on/off features and low battery protection. Or one of the plain standard tiny Pico psu things, but i got one from hong kong that went bang when i plugged it in, luckily it was only £16 delivered.

Then one of these and a compact flash memory card for a hard drive so there's no moving parts (hard drives in hard cars do fail ).

With these components you'll be under 100 watts in power consumption and can recycle your old gear

[Corsa-OZ]

Dom's right especially if you wanted to use it without the engine running at show etc would flatten the battery quite quickly. If money is no object and you wanted to build your own. you could get a Mini ITX board ( range from 60-130 quid) again ebuyer is cheap enough. there 15cm square they have atom dual core and bigger upgrade ability than the acer revo's. so in the future needing a bigger hdd etc its less work than dismantling the revo etc. You would spend more than the acer + your time. £80 quid for the board. + £33 for hdd ( or go all balls out and get a small ssd) then 1gb memory is about 15 quid.+ case (if you didnt make one yourself). You would need mini pci-e wireless (or usb wireless) adapter too. Some of the ITX boards come with them there a good bet for the price difference plus you can use the mini pcie slot for a digi tv tuner etc

easiest is the acer revo tho, if your a geek like me then ITX it is lol

hope that helped

[tng21]

very helpful guys, thanks

Just wanted a pc type thing in the car so i can store all me music and films in there so i can use the screen to watch the films but dont have to make mp3 discs for the changer all the time

[Corsa-OZ]

very helpful guys, thanks

Just wanted a pc type thing in the car so i can store all me music and films in there so i can use the screen to watch the films but dont have to make mp3 discs for the changer all the time

if its just that u want teh get a wd media player. can plug ur hdd in usb what ever plays mp3 vids divx etc has a component out put stright into the abck of the stereo

brad

[jezzasin]

oldsih thread but get an atom cpu based mini itx motherboard (cpu built in and audio and video too) some cheap ram and a big laptop drive, there is plenty of DC-DC power supplys for incar pcs

[stealth106]

Let us know how it goes as i'm interested in building one for my car.

[tng21]

its a very old thread now but i still havent done it lol Never got round to it. tbh this thread confused me a bit but would still love to get one in there somehow.