Carputer Build started, need help sourcing parts

[Street_Kings]

Have an extra Micro ATX board laying about and figured it'd make a cool toy to geekify my integra =)

anyone know of any slot loading USB dvd burners? the burner part is optional, but DVD/CD read slot load is a must, as i'm thinking of putting it where my current CD player is in dash and i would probably end up snapping the tray if i went with a conventional one.

Thinking of Trunk mounting, and have already built in USB hubs into the front of the car, so all expansion/input devices needa be USB. So far, have 2 hubs up front hidden behind the glove with extensions to the trunk area where one day the pc will go, with wiring coming down under my center console and have bored extra USB ports into the dead/empty squares next to the e-brake and 2 inside of the armrest. 2 ports have already been pre-wired to the ostrich and ecu for logging, but the rest are kind of just chillin for now. The end goal will be a Touchscreen LCD (which still needs to be found for a reasonable price =/) to handle mouse input, and maybe a jog wheel type of thing to quick navigate, with the smallest keyboard i can friggin find to shove in the glove/armrest or maybe one of those flexible ones i can just roll up to store when not in use.

Anyone have any experience with this? i'm really worried about the hard drives failing under vibration, and no way am i going to spend the cash on a solid state drive. Was thinking of ditching the HDD alltogether and running a jump drive loaded with ubuntu and using that as a poor man's solid state, with a few extra jump drives plugged in for storage space, but am concerned about whether the drives will be quick enough to not lag the system down to shit.

[forum]

use a notebook drive and mount it well(mine did ok with a normal 3-1/2" drive). Look for the via epia motherboards, smaller than a micro-atx and a little more versatile, they also sell dc-dc power supplies which would make life a lot simpler doing this.

I have a 7ish inch widescreen touchscreen lcd laying around from my old project, the housing is pretty much destroyed though so you would have to do some work and mold it into something, would sell it for like $50 if you want though.

[Mario]

use a notebook drive and mount it well(mine did ok with a normal 3-1/2" drive). Look for the via epia motherboards, smaller than a micro-atx and a little more versatile, they also sell dc-dc power supplies which would make life a lot simpler doing this.

I have a 7ish inch widescreen touchscreen lcd laying around from my old project, the housing is pretty much destroyed though so you would have to do some work and mold it into something, would sell it for like $50 if you want though.

I remember you showing me... *ahem* videos on that screen. Was a sweet setup. :rofl:

[Nightfall]

use a notebook drive and mount it well

+1

Notebook HD's are pretty resiliant

[Deltron_3030]

mp3car.com

[Deceptakhan]

+1

Notebook HD's are pretty resiliant

Oh yeah. I have a laptop desk in my car, and use it daily, drive time can be 4+ hours altogether in a day. No problems here, and we depend on these laptops to do our job. Lotsa dirt roads too.

[Street_Kings]

pimpin, i'll probably end up upgrading the drive in my current notebook and using the old drive as the carputer drive. Out of paranoia, i'll probably keep a live ubuntu jump drive in the car anyway ;-)

Thanks for that site deltron, looks like some good open source frontends that i can pull apart and customize instead of having to build one from the ground up.

As a bonus, i just got Microsoft streets and trips 2007 and the usb GPS unit for $50 from a friend of mine, so if all else fails and i give up on the project i'll still have a navi system and display for less than $150 lol.

On the downside, it looks like i may have to run a WinBlows OS in the car. AFAIK, there's no linux-based OBD-I rom editors that support the ostrich and/or datalogging, and I would really, really like to be able to integrate all that considering it's already wired in. Having the ability to datalog and make changes to maps whenever i feel like it without having to wire anything or dig at any wires would be a definite plus too. Load times will be brutal, but then again i suppose it's a non issue since i have to let the car warm up anyway?

So far, looks like I have everything inline.
I'm HOPING the VIA EPIA-ML8000A (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813181014) is good enough for basic multimedia (divx, dvd's, Streets and Trips, etc) but with only 800mhz i'm thinking it's a no-go.

Those Via Epia's have everything from audio to video to the processor built in, so it's a stupid cheap all in one solution which is nice.

Now all to source is the DVD drive =)

[Nightfall]

Are you going to wire up an internal drive or are you looking for a USB/Firewire external drive?

[Nightfall]

This thing is tiny...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827154034

[Street_Kings]

Are you going to wire up an internal drive or are you looking for a USB/Firewire external drive?

was hoping for an external usb drive, firewire would work too though as i'm planning to trunk mount the mobo and run wires up to the front. USB is great since you can theoretically support 127 devices off the one port, running 3 wires to the front should handle all my inputs. Running PATA/IDE cables from the dash to the trunk would be a nightmare lol.


That drive you linked is pretty nice, slot loading like I was lookin for, will have to measure the dimensions of my current deck slot and see what i'll have to do to make it fit and mount properly.

Learning how to mold and work with plastic right now so i can make the mounts and covers, but the project is coming along much faster than i expected!