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Full Case? I don't get it...

( Pic shows up now ) Nice window work, and props for going red instead of blue like everyone else...

Full sized case. (Not a normal mid-sized ATX case) And yeah, it seems everyone is always leaning towards the blue lights. The cutting and painting was a pain. Had to find good dremel cutting disks and enamel flat black paint.

I do have them in there...

Full sized case. (Not a normal mid-sized ATX case) And yeah, it seems everyone is always leaning towards the blue lights. The cutting and painting was a pain. Had to find good dremel cutting disks and enamel flat black paint.

I went blue for the CarPC cause that's the theme for the car, but the desktopis green for my AMD theme.

I swear by fiberglass cutting wheels, even the "heavy-duty" ones break too easilly.
As for paint, one word....Tremclad

Well, back when i started the CarPC project over 3 years ago, we didn't have no cheap one device solutions. The DVD playing decks were like $2000+, and I don't believe they did GPS either.

This is the ideal solution to be able to to everything any device can, plus it's more powerfun and upgradable using regular off-the-shelf computer components, depending if your the driver, or the passenger. Ideally you don't wanna do stuff like watch movies while your driving, that's just stupid, but the passenger can, or I can when I'm parked. Have you ever sat around and waited for someone? I did just this Saturday, I arrived at a tim horton's parking lot not only 30min early, but she was ended up runing about 30min late...too bad my monitor has been out for repair since i brought my car in for paint, 3-4 days, more like 3 f**king months.

This is the current list of functions
-GPS (Streets & Trips '05, Mappoint '04 with 3rd party Voice Nav and IGuigance 2.1)
-MP3 (I have ALL my Mp3's I own, plus I never have to burn CD's again, no skipping anymore either)
-TV Tuner
-Downloaded Movies
-DVD Player
-Pass-through for PS2, or any console system, or any analog video system, VCR
-Emulators (NES, SNES, SEGA, PS1, MAME, etc)
-Burn CD's (You have no idea how many time I've copied CD's in my parking lot, I keep blank CD's in the car just in case for this reason)
-Rip music CD (Hey, I like that CD/song, can I borrow your CD for a few minutes )
-Download pics from my Digital Camera
-Burn those pics to CD for friends.
-Wireless card for WI-FI hot spots (unsecure routers, or truck stops, partipitating McDonalds, etc)

In the hopefulyl near future, I hope to have a stand-alone management system for the car, and have it interface though the computer.

The benefits to a CarPC (well, mine in particular)
-Easy repair and upgrades using off-the-shelf components
-Easy to read a 15" screen than a smaller 7", maps are more clearer and it requires less off-the-road attention
-Not proprietary
-I can use any piece of software I wish, configure it any way possible.
-Multiple interfaces, Serial, Parallel, USB, Firewire, Bluetooth, basically anything possible, except Cardbus
-No limitations on choise of performance (160GB of storage )


Other possibilities
-HDTV (if i wanted to, but i don't watch TV that often)
-Network gaming (between other CarPC players)
-Wireless between car communications (bah, screw FRS )
-Voice commands (Kinda setup)
-Recording conversations with cops (Kinda setup, but never have done it, you know, in case you get the ass cops)

This post has been edited by Nd4SpdSe on Oct 3 2005, 05:21 AM

Nice stuff!

Always wanted to do something like this...

Weird question, how do the hard drives hold up? >_<

It's great fun to have one, I honnestly almost can't live without it, it drives me nuts not having a GPS (i've gotten off route so many times, most no thanks to the construction on the 401) and using, *gasp*, CD's. after I did one, my friend, who always wanted, we did one in his *mint* '86 prelude early last year, and we just finished putting one in his work Civic this week.

Honenstly enough, absolutely no problem. My first hard drive was a Maxtor 40GB, bought it brand new and was used it for a year in the carppc, it went though a winter as well. After i upgraded to an 80gb and moved it to my sisters computer, in which it died just under the 3 year warranty. Weither is was due to being in the carpc, or just regular hard drive failure, it's hard to day, but it was out of the carpc for almost 2 years before it decided to die. The 80GB is still running strong in my main machine as a 3rd drive, that went though a winter as well (The last winter m Mx-3 will ever see, it was stored away for the first time last winter), That drive was used since I replaced the 40gb until I upgraded to a 160gb back in spring cause it was easier than try to backup all that information cause i wanted to format.

One thing i make sure to do is have the drive mounted on the side, just as a precaution, so if i hit a hard bump, the head wont slam against the platters...the only time the hard drive didn't like it is when i forgot to bungee the suitcase (standing up) to the back of the trunk and hit the brakes fairly hard and it slam down against the trunk floor, than the computer your freeze up, but those are isolated incidences, driving itself has not caused any problems.

This post has been edited by Nd4SpdSe on Oct 3 2005, 08:06 AM

Heres another pic of my crappy computer...


You like?

I hate CRT.

CRT?? o_O?

Care to explain?

It's the type of monitor you have APX

Whats wrong with it?

Nothing...

Some people prefer LCD's

I myself have a dual 21" CRT setup...

LCDs are suppose to be easy on the eyes and it's good for people wit sensitive eyes. CRTs are the best for gaming, plus it has higher refresh rates then LCDs and LCDs are not good when installing reforce refresh.

That's what the 19" Viewsonic with a Refresh Rate of 0.08/0.09 milliseconds.

the highest refresh rate for my laptop is only 100 i thought that was bullshiet but ... im ok with it now its not THAT bad

I still love my monitor

I love my 2 CRTs as well... Only problem is that one's shows some colours darker than the other...

Mess with the settings?

Not sure if that's quite it... And sometimes in OpenSuse (or was it XP) I will sometimes get a horizontal scrolling down one screen and upwards on the other...

You run dual as well?

My wife runs dual monitors. One 17 inch CRT and one 17 inch LCD.

APX- Don't let anyone get down on your CRT..they are inherently better than LCD's for several reasons. The only things I can think of off hand in favor of LCD's is they're a bit easier on your eyes and they're much lighter and space saving. That said...I'm glad I bought an LCD..now that I've gotten used to it I really dig it







Casey

The only reason I run CRT is because they're cheaper...

I could really go for dual 19" LCD's ( at least 19's )

Yup... I have yet to get it work right under Linux though... ><

I wanna run dual CRTs too... but i don't know how

You just need a video card that supports two monitors... Usually they have a DVI and VGA monitor inputs....