Carputer 101

[937DYTBOI]

any words on the miny xp

[Ruffy]

let me rephrase my issue, mine can go into hibernation but wont turn back on, i probally just need to play around with it some more.

the laptop issues are turning it on, voltage drops, problems with monitors not turning on without use of short cut on keyboard, using the dvd/cd rom (u cant use it without reach for the laptop wherever it may be, unless u have an external, Sound quality...

u can use a laptop im not goin to stop you, but i dont believe i would use it one.

Turning it on simple. There's fairly simple kit out there now for this that cost about 15-20 in parts, or 35 premade to facilitate this. It does involve soldering a couple points on the power button of the laptop. Overall not hard. especially if you use a docking station for the laptop. It auto turns on the laptop for you when you start the car, just like a regular carpc startup controller. It also prevents you from restarted the laptop if it was already on and you cranked the car up.

Voltage drops arent a problem since you use the battery. All You really need is a good protected/regulated power inverter or adapter. I plan on having it go into sleep then hibernation. Charge for awhile and then when the car battery gets to 11.5Volts or so, shut off the charger. It'll still run off battery/hibernation for a good long while. It's basically the same thing people are doing with standard carpcs.

On most modern laptops if you boot the laptop with a external vga screen plugged in it will auto output to that vga screen. Mine does this no problem. as long as you boot it with the cable plugged in theres no need to use the FN+f5 key
Also I have a mini handheld keyboard which will be installed somewhere in the car. Doubt I can do the FN+F5 Key combo but so far i have not needed it. My laptops been running in the back seat for about a month now.

If you make a car pc you more than likely arent going to be using the DVD/CD often. You can just use an external usb one mounted somewhere else in the car if you need it so bad. On top of that there do exsist laptop drive to usb adapters, meaning you can fabricate a slim laptop dvd+rw drive anywhere, same thing you would have to do if you wanted an easily accessable optical drive with a standard carpc. Unless you have a mac mini you're not going to be able to get back to it and load a dvd quickly.

Sound quality is a moot point since you can still use high quality usb sound cards/dacs. or if your laptop supports it full sized PCI cards(There are many out there, the docking station itself has 3 PCI slots, Dells I believe, A old usable dell with over 1ghz can be had for 250-350, the docking station would be $50) Then theres PCMA Cards.

I dont like pci sound cards tho due to noise interferance. Especially in a car enviornment. I'd rather go with a decent usb -> optical out -> sound processor.

Also newer laptops put out alot more power than older ones
My HP ZE2000 puts out 0.5v From the headphone jack
My HP DV6105 puts out almost 2v from the headphone jack

Dont know what my Acer Aspire 5102 puts out as I havent measured it.

[Megalomaniac]

u seem to know a lot about the laptop use if anybody asks a question about using a laptop please feel free to answer them.

im satisfied with my carputer and ur satisfied with urs.



also some questions people have asked were "can i just use an old IBM laptop off ebay for like $100" so those laptops arent the beefiest of ease of use IMO

[.::DuD3::.]

got a quick question. if i were to buy a hu thats dvd compatible, could i aux in to the pc to use that instead of using a separate dvd drive?

[Megalomaniac]

no, unless u have a video in on your videocard to capture video...even then there will be a slight delay

[AJ²06]

u seem to know a lot about the laptop use if anybody asks a question about using a laptop please feel free to answer them.

im satisfied with my carputer and ur satisfied with urs.



also some questions people have asked were "can i just use an old IBM laptop off ebay for like $100" so those laptops arent the beefiest of ease of use IMO

PM me pics...
Hows it feeling overalll with the carputer?

[Megalomaniac]

PM me pics...
Hows it feeling overalll with the carputer?

I love my carputer...about to invest in an Alpine 701 or 700 processor with controller to get rid of my HU.

im in the process of redoin my console i dont think youd want to see it.



old pic before tear down

[AJ²06]

Doesn't look tooooo rough...

[lamont1]

man i'm loving this topic

[Megalomaniac]

glad to hear


btw I plan on goin Optical as soon as I find an Alpine h701 or h700 on sale somewhere

[mattf]

So I am thinking about putting one of these in my car now.

First question I have is how do the computer parts/lcd screen stand up to the cold? As you know, MN gets pretty cold in the winter. 20-30 below is expected. Would this hurt anything?

[Randy Savage]

So I am thinking about putting one of these in my car now.

First question I have is how do the computer parts/lcd screen stand up to the cold? As you know, MN gets pretty cold in the winter. 20-30 below is expected. Would this hurt anything?

It's not quite as cold here as it is for you, but it gets quite cold here.

On really cold days my screen will not be as sensitive on the touch screen for the first ~5 minutes or so. Other then that, I've had no problems with the cold.

[Megalomaniac]

So I am thinking about putting one of these in my car now.

First question I have is how do the computer parts/lcd screen stand up to the cold? As you know, MN gets pretty cold in the winter. 20-30 below is expected. Would this hurt anything?

dont wire the start up control like i did then. i wired mine to were the computer boots when remote started. lets say you dont have a remote start. when you crank to start the car/computer the computer will boot up. But in the cold weather the HDD wont get detected. so i say install a switch to the startup controller,its easy you just hook up a switch to the ignition wire coming to the startupcontroller, like yo do on stereos only diferance is on a stereo you put the switch on the remote wire.

now with that switch your carputer wont turn on imediately, that gives you time for your car to warm up a bit then hit that switch and bam it will boot fine, or some people have made their own tempreture sensors to heat up the hdd to a certain temp to keep it stable(i dont really know how to do that)

[Megalomaniac]

It's not quite as cold here as it is for you, but it gets quite cold here.

On really cold days my screen will not be as sensitive on the touch screen for the first ~5 minutes or so. Other then that, I've had no problems with the cold.

so your carputer still runnnin fine any changes?

[Randy Savage]

so your carputer still runnnin fine any changes?

Yep, fine and dandy.

Nothing changed. Waiting till I get a large external HDD to add some games in there (I've got Madden 07, NHL 07, and Battlefron 2142t torrents D/L'ed, but they are 4+gig files), and put in iG 3.0, still using 2.1.

Might try TinyXP too.