[L33t_m4st3r]

I was reading the article about the flat PC and he said he hooked his PC upto his car, is this possible???
cause it would be pretty cool if you could.
you could do the suitcase PC and use it in the car with a LCDscreen or sumthin (especially if the car already had them fitted).
just an idea guys

[FunkDaMonkMan]

Yes it is possible. There have been a few threads about it here, but I don't see them and the search isn't working right now for some reason.

The things you have to worry about are:

• Heat
• room to put it
• turbulence, (hard drives don't like bumps)
• theft, if you don't mount it in the dash or center console

Some suggestions are

laptop hard drives, because they can take more bumps and are smaller.

VIA Cyrix processors because they put out VERY little heat, and are powerful enough to play mp3's and basic software. (no divx movies though).

[KILLorBE]

Linky

You could also do a search on google.

**EDIT** Welcome to the forums L33t_m4st3r

[BlueWraith]

You can buy power inverters at walmart or most car audio shops that will use the cars 12v system to power a 110v outlet. Using that, you can plug the power supply into there.

www.mp3car.com has some great pictures and install help.

I used to have a lil HP from wallyworld in my truck. It made a great armrest, but other then playing Starcraft it wasn't much good in there. I didn't have anything that I could run to the speakers to make them work with the carputer.

[i_like_penguins]

i dont recomend power inverters. you get tons of noise in the auido output. it might be better to try to make a psu that takes 12v. it would be a ton of work but worth it.

[gecko]

Its actually not too dificult to make a power supply that runs off of 14.4V DC. I even saw some schematics for one online (though I cant remember where).
I agree that power inverters are a bad idea.

My friend did do it though. He's an electrical engineer and he made the p/s and I mounted it under the dash with access points for usb, keyboard, and trackball all hidden where the ash tray should be.
Then we added a remote to it and ran winamp off of that to a 6" LCD that was mounted in the glove compartment with a cd-rom.

It was a pain in the *** but it worked well before you could buy an mp3 player. I would have done it differently if the computer was powerfull enough to play divx or mpegs... but it wasn't.

-Pete

[twump]

you can order a psu built for a car from here

http://www.opussolutions.com/

[G@ZZ@]

Originally posted by twump
you can order a psu built for a car from here

http://www.opussolutions.com/

Sweet link twump !

[FunkDaMonkMan]

Originally posted by twump
you can order a psu built for a car from here

http://www.opussolutions.com/

awesome.. thanx!

i've been looking for something like that.

a tad expensive ($190), but it will do the job.

[FunkDaMonkMan]

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=187
have you seen this mobo?

Looks to be perfect for a card mod.

It has everything from 5.1 surround sound to firewire and usb2.0 in

17cm by 17cm!!!

[BlueWraith]

Originally posted by FunkDaMonkMan
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=187
have you seen this mobo?

Looks to be perfect for a card mod.

It has everything from 5.1 surround sound to firewire and usb2.0 in

17cm by 17cm!!!

... O.O Wow... okay... Thats a tiny mobo... I've seen microatx mobos before, but never quite that small. Perfect for the in-dash computer.. or even under the seat. Just hope ya dont need many cards...

[KILLorBE]

Originally posted by BlueWraith
Just hope ya dont need many cards...

As in Credit Cards

[eab]

How fast does a computer have to be to play DVDs and divxs with out any studering?

[Ben721]

I'd say around 800mhz I guess.

I want to make a pc in my car.

[twump]

Originally posted by FunkDaMonkMan


awesome.. thanx!

i've been looking for something like that.

a tad expensive ($190), but it will do the job.

yeah every dc-dc psu i have looked at was over $150 even for low wattage.
I have a few other links for dc-dc psu's but none that are specifically built for a car. the psu on that link is absolutely perfect for a car comp. i don't remember the specifics but basically it will put the comp into a hibernation type of mode while the car is off so you don't have to reboot everytime you start the car. its got some kind of protection so it won't completely drain a battery and many other useful features.

i'd rather spend $190 on a good psu then spend $300+ replacing all the parts that can get fried by a psu that it either hooked to an invertor or can't handle the sloppy voltage of a car battery.

[L33t_m4st3r]

I agree with twump about the PSU's.

Thanks for the link about the MOBO, dude its sweet!!

Thankx Guys

[eh?]

Originally posted by eab
How fast does a computer have to be to play DVDs and divxs with out any studering?

it depends. Ive seen 233s do it just fine. But i personaly wouldn't go below 500

FunkDaMonkMan that board is awesome. Everything is intregrated, even the cpu!

*edit*you can pick that board up for $123 plus shipping. Thats a great deal.http://www.mwave.com/mwave/doc2/a19143.html

[cryogen97]

that is an awesome link for that car DC-DC PSU. That's been my most difficult thing to find in my planning of my car PC. It looks awesome.

For the mobo, I was thinking more along the lines of the VIA M1000. It uses VIA's newer cpu chip and is actually better at playing movies than a lot of normal computers. see here for review: http://www.envynews.com/review.php?ID=446

And since we're on the subject. a high resolution screen is the next big hangup for most people. I found this screen a little while ago. http://www.directron.com/700ts.html 7 inch touch screen with 1.15 MegaPixel resolution -- compared to 0.38 for most screens. A tad expensive, but almost unparalleled in image quality. Only alpine has a screen with this high resolution and they want over $2k for it

[FunkDaMonkMan]

I would buy that monitor.. its sweet.. thanx for the link.

so we have...

• dc-dc converter - $175
• epia 10000 w/ 512megs of kingson ram - $216
• xenarc 700TS 7" tft lcd monitor - $499
• laptop HDD with converter ~$150

so that's about
$1050 for a very nice system in your car.

You could even add a wireless ethernet card in the extra pci slot so you could access your netork while you are near your house .

[twump]

Originally posted by FunkDaMonkMan
I would buy that monitor.. its sweet.. thanx for the link.

so we have...

• dc-dc converter - $175
• epia 10000 w/ 512megs of kingson ram - $216
• xenarc 700TS 7" tft lcd monitor - $499
• laptop HDD with converter ~$150

so that's about
$1050 for a very nice system in your car.

You could even add a wireless ethernet card in the extra pci slot so you could access your netork while you are near your house .

wow i can't beleive i never thought about wireless networking with my car pc. i had planned on using a hard drive cradle so i could just pull my hd from the car put it in my pc and transfer movies and such to it but wireless would be alot less work