Car Computer Install ??

I am about to start on my carputer project and would like opinions on what others have done for casing &/or box for the components? Is it also a necessity for a fan to cool the parts for a smaller casing? any help appreciated!!

[Naich]

easiest way is to mount the computer in the trunk. The best way is to make a glass mold of the inside of the glove box and fit a micro PC in there. Yes, you need fans.

[Aleromaster]

I used a HP e-pc and it fits pefectly under the passenger front seat if you remove the spring under the seat and tweak the spring bar a little bit, plus all the cable reach perfecly with out having to extend them. I can't really explain teh screen mount I made since it only a piece of wood holding al the bare components in the dash.

Ok, i have been thinking about this for a while now. i don't have the money yet to do it, but i have been thinking about puting the computer between the driver and passager under the dash, there is enough room for a 6.5 by 6.5 motherboard but not to sure about the power supply or the hard drives.

[Naich]

mounting it there will be very tricky. Its tighter than it looks.

I'm on my carputer v2.
It will have OBDII, new sound and faster boot.
And maybe based on a new software. (Frodoplayer)

But I think it will be a project for the summer/autumn.
I have had my carputer since this winter. I do not use any extra fan, other than the via cpufan.

my setup:

Via Epia M1000
D-link radio
seagate 160 GB HDD
USB-GPS
philips Aurilium sound card
7" touchscreen VGA LCD

Win 2000 Lite
MediaCar

GPS software:
Destinator
Mappoint
Autoroute
Route 66

if your interested in faster booting you can use compact flash as your hard drive and that brings boot times down to about 4 seconds. Its fairly cheap but, you can only write to compact flash about a million times so the cost can add up unless you can figure out how to stop windows from writing to it so much.

[brsexton]

It would be cool to have the OBDII reader in with the carputer. That way, you can see how yor car is running all the time.

[BLK03GXS]

Originally posted by brsexton@Jul 5 2004, 11:54 AM
It would be cool to have the OBDII reader in with the carputer. That way, you can see how yor car is running all the time.

Yes, yes it would, that is on my mod list... but i want a JOTO desk or other similar mount for a laptop... beacuse i want it removeable... :thumbsup:

[FormulaNERD]

i posted a link for an odbII serial adapter... 88 bucks, throw in a serial to usb adapter and you're set.

[sound_xtreme]

Originally posted by Joshter@Jul 5 2004, 02:29 AM
if your interested in faster booting you can use compact flash as your hard drive and that brings boot times down to about 4 seconds. Its fairly cheap but, you can only write to compact flash about a million times so the cost can add up unless you can figure out how to stop windows from writing to it so much.

put your swap file on a regular drive or get rid of it completely and set the drive as read only.

Originally posted by sound_xtreme+Jul 6 2004, 08:20 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (sound_xtreme @ Jul 6 2004, 08:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-Joshter@Jul 5 2004, 02:29 AM
if your interested in faster booting you can use compact flash as your hard drive and that brings boot times down to about 4 seconds. Its fairly cheap but, you can only write to compact flash about a million times so the cost can add up unless you can figure out how to stop windows from writing to it so much.

put your swap file on a regular drive or get rid of it completely and set the drive as read only.[/b][/quote]
THought about moving the paging file but windows still writes a lot, example: like how it keeps track of recent history and recent applications, and last good know configuration. If you could stop all of that it would work great.