Hey everyone... Just thought i would post this up here for anyone looking into installing their own carPC

i'm curently working on installing a PC in my car with the following specs...

500Mhz
256Mb RAM
30Gb HDD
DVD-ROM
802.11b Wireless Card (USB)
GPS Navigation

the main PC unit will be installed in the trunk, i dont haven't started this part of the install yet... when i do ill post pics

the 7" Lilliput Touchscreen, DVD-ROM, USB Ports, and Power Button Will be installed up-front on the custom addon to my dash i have just started...

Pics of everything will be posted up here: http://djx.dyndns.org/images/dash-proj/

Please lemme kno what you think or if you have any questions

Is the DVD player IDE? What are you going to do for an IDE cable? Have you checked to see if there will be a lag problem running an IDE device that far away from the CPU.

nerfbars said:

Is the DVD player IDE? What are you going to do for an IDE cable? Have you checked to see if there will be a lag problem running an IDE device that far away from the CPU.

Click to expand...

you can get ide to usb cables. thats what i have my car dvd rom hooked up to right now. once you get your pc in youll be amazed at how you ever lived without it. . i have had mine in for probably 6 months and i love the thing. for power, i suggest heavily you get the opus power supply (it turns the comp on and off automatically wien the key is in the ignition. go to www.mp3car.com and look for all the info youll need.

yea im getting an ide to usb for the dvd-rom, and mp3car.com is a GREAT source for carpc's... i learned everything from fiberglassing to the electronics from there

another update... i have mounted the pc in my trunk

pics at: http://djx.dyndns.org/images/carpc/

please dont tell me ur gonna leave it like that.....i woulda gone w/ a shuttle

no no... i start on fiberglassing a case for it tommorrow, it will have the mitsubishi emblem made out of plexiglass on the side of it with neon inside so everything will light up at night ansd shine our DSM logo :laugh:

djXternal said:

Hey everyone... Just thought i would post this up here for anyone looking into installing their own carPC

i'm curently working on installing a PC in my car with the following specs...

500Mhz
256Mb RAM
30Gb HDD
DVD-ROM
802.11b Wireless Card (USB)
GPS Navigation

the main PC unit will be installed in the trunk, i dont haven't started this part of the install yet... when i do ill post pics

the 7" Lilliput Touchscreen, DVD-ROM, USB Ports, and Power Button Will be installed up-front on the custom addon to my dash i have just started...

Pics of everything will be posted up here: http://djx.dyndns.org/images/dash-proj/

Please lemme kno what you think or if you have any questions

Click to expand...

considerring prices today, why such weak specs? at least bump up the RAM in that thing so that it'l boot quicker.

i'd use 1394/firewire. Firewire, although having a slower peak bandwidth (400mb/s) will have a faster constant bandwidth. Be sure to add some extra shock protection for the harddrive - or use a 2.5inch ide/laptop drive - they are a lot more shock friendly.

ok guys i know this prob sounds stupid. but what exactly is a car computer? is it just like the pc u have in ur house except its built for a car?. does it do anything extra?...please let me know...ty

It's a low power pc that is essentially the same as the one you have in your house. Capable of all the same stuff, but they are often integrated with the car's systems or to extend the car's capabilities. IE: GPS navigation, mp3 playback through the stereo system, rear view cameras, dvd playback, cellphone integration for wireless internet...etc. Probably one of the most original integrations I've ever seen was replacing the keyed locks on a vehicle with fingerprint scanners...original, cool...but not very practical.

well the weak specs right now only because i had these things laying around and have been spending all the money on fiberglass, screen, cables, etc...

and a carpc is just the same pc you would have at home, but installed to be used in your car... most of the time using a touchscreen

and the reason i am not using firewire is that i don't have money for a card atm... but i do plan to upgrade cpu, memory, motherboard (usb 2.0 capable)

hey guys i've been thinking about doing this for a while, i had a few questions maybe you can answer. first what are you using for a power supply? is the opus power supply intended for this use? i mean can you run desk top components with it running off 12v dc? also you mentioned using a laptop hard drive becuase of its more shock friendly but i have an entire older desk top that i was gonna pull out of the case and mount in the trunk, how long could i expect it to last if i mounted on lets say isolated rubber bushings? thanks for the advise guys!

yes the opus was designed for this kind of thing, although i am going to be using a power inverter and the original power supply from my pc

3.5" hard drives are fine when mounted vertically, no need for extra shock absorbtion or a 2.5" HDD unless you drive on INSANELY rough roads

a great source of info on carPC's is www.mp3car.com im on there as much as i am here

damn your server is slow

WTF why would it matter if you mount a HD vertically or horizitally?

BTW, a 1.5in HD or a external one might be a better bet if you are looking for shock absorbancy.

256mb of ram will blow unless you get some duel channel DDR400. You need to plan on getting more ram, that is just way too little.

The 500 mhz on the proc is also a little low, the newer sony PDAs have strongarm processors that are at least that fast in them. It would just make me feel bad if a hand held had a faster processor than I did.

Let me know where you are going to find a 30Gig HD.



Here is my recomendation for getting a fairly good PC that is still not too overly expensive:

Ram: 512meg of DDR400
Processor: 1ghz celleron( Really cheap now a days)
HD: I'd go a 120Gig 7200 RPM WD HD.(Still pretty cheap but now you will be able to have a nive music collection in your car)
Scratch the wireless NIC

when a hd is mounted horizontally, when a bump is hit, the arm on the hd has a tendency to strike the disk... although when it is mounted vertically, it is much harder to get that arm to hit the disk

and incase you havent been reading my posts, the reason my components are what they are is because i already had all these laying around including proc, ram, and hdd

and yes my server can be slow sumtimes, its on a dsl line... but soon my dsl is being upgraded and should be much faster

gamingguru said:

WTF why would it matter if you mount a HD vertically or horizitally?

BTW, a 1.5in HD or a external one might be a better bet if you are looking for shock absorbancy.

256mb of ram will blow unless you get some duel channel DDR400. You need to plan on getting more ram, that is just way too little.

The 500 mhz on the proc is also a little low, the newer sony PDAs have strongarm processors that are at least that fast in them. It would just make me feel bad if a hand held had a faster processor than I did.

Let me know where you are going to find a 30Gig HD.



Here is my recomendation for getting a fairly good PC that is still not too overly expensive:

Ram: 512meg of DDR400
Processor: 1ghz celleron( Really cheap now a days)
HD: I'd go a 120Gig 7200 RPM WD HD.(Still pretty cheap but now you will be able to have a nive music collection in your car)
Scratch the wireless NIC

Click to expand...

Thank you for that incredibly uninformative post.

First of all, your memory demands are mostly based on the operating system you are running. Most people who look for quicker boot up times in Windows will disable as many startup applications as they can.

Dual channel would be utterly useless unless you use 2 256MB, otherwise it won't work in dual channel mode. Not even is it incredibly unneccessary to run dual channel memory in a car pc, but it's even dumber to think that adding another 256MB of memory will help boost his system. His bottleneck would lie in his processor, not that playing music/movies requires much work from the processor.

Plus the fact that you would NEVER be able to mate DDR memory with an older 500MHz processor. That kind of motherboard would only accept PC100/PC133.

What the hell is a 1.5" hard drive? Last time I checked lap top hard drives were 2.5" and an external hard drive is nothing but an internal hard drive in an external enclosure. The best way to go about it would be the way he suggested, mounting it vertically.

The wireless network card whether it's pci, usb or pcmcia is almost a neccessity, if you have a wireless network setup, I wouldn't think to not include it. Not unless you want to waste time burning all your music/movies to CD/DVD.

I didn't suggest that he get 256mdg duel channel, I said 512 of DDR400.

What do you mean dual channel would be usless unless you use 256 of it?
I have two Cosiar XMS 512 DDR 400 sticks in my pc right now running dual channel. Running 512 in dual channel is far superior to running 256 dual channel.

1.5s are generally small portable solid state decices that people use as HD's is situations where using a standard HD is impractical.

I suggested higher specs because I think that running Win Media player or win amp or even DIvX would not work very well, and who want to have their computer crashing all the time because they are running an outdated version of winows such as Win95

Are you saying the the wireless NIC is so that he can transfer movies, music and such to his PC from inside his house? If so, then I can see a benefit to this, although the car would have to be on during the data transfers, which could take a while. I really do think that using a standard cat5e cable would be a better bet for data transfers though.
1. they are faster
2. I am not sure if a wireless NIC would even be able to get range when your PC is out in your garage and the router is some where inside the house.....

Any standard wireless g router would do fine for the kind of range.

I don't want to hijack this thread with useless arguing.

I'm building a similar computer setup out of different parts I have laying around the house from previous computer builds.

My system will consist of the following.

Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo
AMD Athlon 2500XP-Mobile
200GB 7200 rpm HDD
256MB DDR400 PC3200
ATI 9200SE Graphics Card
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 5.1 Sound
Xenarc 7" VGA USB Touch Screen
Opus 150W Power Supply

I'm planning on downclocking the athlon mobile 2500 to a 2000xp, while retaining the same lower voltage core to help with the power consumption. I'm also building my own case, but instead of fiberglass, I will be plexing it all and mounting under the board that covers the spare tire, and also mounting my amp in the same area.

A lot of people use the slimline dvd players used on laptops and buy 2.5" external usb hard drive enclosures to make up for the long ide cable. Instead I'm just setting up a USB connection close to the screen where I can plug in my 1GB memory stick/thumb drive.

i have in my car pc
VIA M-10000 Motherboard
1ghz C3 Processor
250 GB 7200RPM hdd
256MB RAM
7" Lilliput touchscreen
and opus 90w power supply

if you want everything to fit in dash, get the c134 case (search pricewatch.com to find it)
it will hold everything excluding the power supply in a single din case. ive buit 3 computers using these cases to fit in the eclipse din slot. youll need .8" ddr ram as well as 2.5" hdd and a slim line disc drive to fit everything in the case.

Chuckt said:

i have in my car pc
VIA M-10000 Motherboard
1ghz C3 Processor
250 GB 7200RPM hdd
256MB RAM
7" Lilliput touchscreen
and opus 90w power supply

if you want everything to fit in dash, get the c134 case (search pricewatch.com to find it)
it will hold everything excluding the power supply in a single din case. ive buit 3 computers using these cases to fit in the eclipse din slot. youll need .8" ddr ram as well as 2.5" hdd and a slim line disc drive to fit everything in the case.

Click to expand...

Def take Chuck's advice of mounting the components as close to each other as possible. This will def help eliminate any noise interference issues, plus you can mount your dvd player closer.

playing divx can get a little rough on a 500mhz which is why i want to upgrade sumtime in the future

and as you can see carpc's are a great deal of personal preference, and much depend on how you plan to be using the system

oh and btw i am running winXP Home

Very good.

You are planning on upgrading to a BIG HD I hope also. I don't mean big like 1 tetrabyte big, just like a 120 gig

yea i do... but i just havent had any spare money for it with my little paying, few hours worked job... its hard to even pay my insurance

well, if you can afford more, then obviosly get it.. as far as the xp kernel goes, the more RAM the better - which will help boot up times. As far as the pc location, you might have noise issues with the usb cable and that long of a run. Though MONSTER will be releasing a usb2 cable soon, which will eliminate all noise (just got back from a seminar on their cables). So if you have troubles, either re-locate the machine or get a better shielded cable.

I recommend a form of shock protection on the harddrive only for extra security. Yes, mounting it vertically will help the arm from bouncing off the plater, but there are other factors involved. I'm just saying maybe make something to cut the chance of harddrive damage to almost nothing - just a better safe than sorry attitude.

and the 1.5 inch solid state harddrives mentioned, which are compact flash cards with ide/cf adapters, aren't really good in this sense. Storage for data will require at least 40-60 gigs with movies an music.. a 2 gig cf card just wouldn't cut it. That, and the access time on them isn't that impressive. SATA, if you can afford it, is impressive on burst speed and overall bandwidth.

Let us know how the mounting of the screen goes - though i sure wish Chuckt would add some pics of his lilliput screen in his gallery < hint hint >