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I'm digging up the parts to build myself an incar computer system to replace my head unit entirely (not just coexist) I'm not sure which setup to go with, a dos based mp3 player that will only play mp3's or a win95 based system that will do eventually do mp3/dvd/tv/radio/internet the boot time and easy shutdown of a dos system has benifits for a pure mp3 music source but the expansion of a windows based system makes me second guess... anyone built either of these? pro's/con's of either.. I plan on building myself a preamp/display in a single din unit to replace my head unit.. whichever way I go, but a windows based unit will also require an lcd screen for video.. opinions? recomendations?
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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Ive wanted to do someth9ing like that for ever. The time to write the code for a touch screen lcd (which sould be cool) would take for ever. And then all the testing and debugging, yukk.
------------------ 2-DD 9512's 2-2000X's (for now) 8.0ft^3 box in a civic trunk One big ass port ?????dB's
It's not the size of your woofer, It's the size of the waves your woofer makes!
Posts: 1259 | From: Fullerton. CA ,USA | Registered: Oct 1999
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All of those premade mp3 players cost a fortune.... (and where's the challenge and satisfaction when it's done) for a dos based unit all you really need is an early pentium board/chip bit of ram, HD, sound card with dos drivers some way of powering the computer and an LCD character display (not lcd video screen) setting the total cost at a few hundred instead of many hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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I thought about linux (mainly for the possible fast boot and read only disk) but I prefer windows (shudders as I say it.. lol) never thought I'd say that but my hardware works in windows (ati all in wonder pro, tv tuner etc) and I don't have the time to MAKE things work in linux, so with some playing I've heard ppl get win98 or winME too boot pretty quick. but there's always room for change later on so I might try dos and linux later if I"m not happy with windows
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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I work for the Coast Guard and we have ships with computers running NT. We were having a problem changing from ships power to shore power because the crew would forget to shut down the computers properly each time they had to make the change. We needed a fix to keep the computers from just shutting off whenever the power was cut so we bought some UPS's. The ones we bought had a parallel port interface on them to tell windows NT to shut down properly whenever commercial power was lost. This system may be very useful in a car to make your computer shut down properly by itself whenever the car is shut off. Or you could probably build something yourself that would perform the same task...
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Posts: 76 | From: Quispamsis, New Brunswick, Canada | Registered: Oct 1999
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The reason win98, and winME boot so fast is the speed of the processor, and the amount of memory. put either on a machine running less than 300Mhz, and 16Mb and you're looking at serious boot time. Win2000 loads like lighting on my computer at home, but I have 256Mb running at 1Ghz. The only experience I have with NT is with the Network at work. It's a multi platform Unix/NT network, and it sucks ass. That's my only experience with NT...I've always liked 95, even with the all too common "blue screen of death." LOL
------------------ Jeff Sony CDX-7850 Sony XDP766-EQ 3 Sony 752-EQX 2 Sony ES 6.5 Seperates 2 Crossfire CFA-1000D DD-9515
quote:Originally posted by Hertz_so_good: Win2000 loads like lighting on my computer at home, but I have 256Mb running at 1Ghz. The only experience I have with NT is with the Network at work. It's a multi platform Unix/NT network, and it sucks ass. That's my only experience with NT...I've always liked 95, even with the all too common "blue screen of death." LOL
You've had quite a bit of experience with NT, hehe, since win2000 is NT 5...lol But anyways, there are some big points here to look out for. One is gonna be the Hard drive. The reality is, the bigger the HD you got, the more fragil it is. HD's don't like going up and down and boucing around, so you best be real careful where you mount it. The second prob is close proximitey to magnetic devices. KEEP AWAY from speakers, lol. Actuallly, if you wanted to be really spiffy, just set up the pc to boot into, oh say, winamp. In which case then you can get one of those little ps/2 numpads and just setup a macross for the keys and the commmands on the pc, thereby eleminating the need for a moniter. Sticking with a win based OS is really gonna save you some headache in this particular case. As far as load times go, it really depends more on the crap in the Reg on startup. Just keep it clean and simple and even the smallest proc will boot pretty darn quick. Course going for one of those $99 4" lcd's at partsexpress dosen't seem like to bad an idea either. I personally think it whould be bad @ss to set up one of winamps spectum anaylizers (ala acid trip or any of the other wicked ones) and jam out to cypruss hill, but hey, to each his own, good luck!
------------------ Main Entry: snot Pronunciation: 'snät Function: noun Etymology Middle English, from Old English gesnot; akin to Old High German snuzza nasal mucus Date: 15th century 1 : nasal mucus 2 : a snotty person 3 : Bass head, abandonware addict, general knowitall major switching math sucking bad attitude fat bastard.
Posts: 1082 | From: Former BS Moderator <IMG SRC= | Registered: Mar 2000
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well right now I"m using my laptop as my main computer and the old desktop has become the doner (laptop is faster anyways hehe) I got a 20 character X 4 line lcd display which works great at displaying winamp info, I might do the 4, 5, or 6" lcd screen later on.. right now I'm building my own controls (from an old keyboard controler with just the numbers I need hard wired to it) I plan to build the LCD and buttons into a single din "controler" to replace my head unit. only hangup right now is power supply, I'm not into doing the inverter/normal pc power supply, my MB uses AT power so that's fairly easy, I'm thinking of using an old amp (outputs are dead.. and it's a kenwood) but the power supply is still perfect so using the rails from that and regulating down to the +/- 12, and -5 I need, I'll do the +5 just from the 12V car power because of the current demands, that should give me a setup that will operate from 10v-15v roughly.. I've been thinking of doing a macro as a windows shutdown with a certain key press and wiring it to both the ignition and door pinswitch so that windows only shuts down if the key is removed from the ignition and the door is opened (when I leave the car) and do a 15 or so second timer that after the door is opened, power to the "kenwood power supply" is cut and everything turns off as it should after windows has safely shutdown. well this is the plan sofar, any other ideas comments, problems you see that I don't???
as for the hard drive it will be mounted vertically suspending fairly rigidly by thick rubber bands (best way I've seen of doing it sofar on any mp3 car site) and for magnetic interference, it will be mounted on the right side of my hatch and a single ADS RS 12 on the left side (a good 30 inches apart)..
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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Dude, that will be totally bad@ss Make sure to get some pics up when she's ready
Another Idea I tossed around today was the use of a lan in the pc. Mayhaps setup a small hub in the car, and somehow rig it up (haven't thought it out very well yet, lol) so you can use a labtop to operate the computer system inside that car from the outside (ala a network admistration tool, or even something like Back Orifice or Netbus would actually work, lol and you could use a standard cat5 ...or hell, even some kinda wireless network device would really freaking rock ). Don't know, but man, it sounds really cool. Maybe I'll copycat you this summer, lol Good luck!
------------------ Main Entry: snot Pronunciation: 'snät Function: noun Etymology Middle English, from Old English gesnot; akin to Old High German snuzza nasal mucus Date: 15th century 1 : nasal mucus 2 : a snotty person 3 : Bass head, abandonware addict, general knowitall major switching math sucking bad attitude fat bastard.
Posts: 1082 | From: Former BS Moderator <IMG SRC= | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Snot: You've had quite a bit of experience with NT, hehe, since win2000 is NT 5...lol
Well...ok...given. 2000 is BASED on the NT technology, but The code was revamped and changed quite a bit. based on intended design you can call it NT 5.0, but based on coding, it's dissimilar enough that you can't really say you have NT experience if you use 2000. 2000 is MUCH better than then NT 4.0
------------------ Jeff Sony CDX-7850 Sony XDP766-EQ 3 Sony 752-EQX 2 Sony ES 6.5 Seperates 2 Crossfire CFA-1000D DD-9515
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Snot... damn that's a good idea, the car/laptop is already network ready (to tranfer mp3's in/out of the car system, I never thought of using it to actually control the system remotly... Think I could actually get away with using the laptop as my podium to control my SPL setup this summer? are mp3 test tones legal? =)
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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me and a buddy of mine were thinkin of a dvd rom in place of his headunit and the monitor right below. he'll have cd, dvd, mp3, and w/a cellular modem and 1250 night and weekend sprint pcs minutes, he'll have online navigation too. it's in the planning stages as of now, but would be pretty sweet if actualized.
------------------ Power without control isn't performance. It's dangerous. The car.... My old car
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I was thinking of doing the dvd rom aswell, but I'm not sure how well it'd work (pc in the back) the dvd rom I'd like is the pioneer slot load, that way it could be done inplace of the cd player and with some work, made to look like a normal head unit.. but I'll get the mp3's workin first before I get that far.
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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I would be worried about the hard drive being corrupted by the vibrations. The heads are EXTREEMLY close (to small for dust particals to pass) to the platters on the hard drive and a vibration or bump could cause the head to hit the platter(s). Just a thought. I've always wanted to do this though.
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Clarion Pro audio DRX7475 JL 6.5 components crossfire 602 for components 3 12 W6's Cadence A7HC 2 optima red tops 160 amp Ohio Gen. Alt. 1/0 all the way around.
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well....the cost of the new Clarion Joyride (Auto PC) will be about $2000 thats DVD, Nav, 5.1 decoder, and MP3 player!!!!! not to mention all of the other stuff you can do with it and you just have a din unit and a small hideaway unit
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Posts: 515 | From: Omaha NE, USA | Registered: Nov 2000
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2G's US I assume.. well, the basic computer I had (p1 233, 64meg,20 gig hd, dvd rom/decoder card, all in wonder pro (tv tuner, tv out), awe 64 gold, (will upgrade later to a soundblaster live with 5.1 when I do dvd) so total cost is fairly low as these parts are cheap now... the only moderatially expensive parts will be the screen (depending if I do a basic NSTC tft screen or if I go with a vga screen).. and unlike the clarion unit this is completely upgradable and configurable.. so in the end I'll have DVD with front/rear screens the option for dvd in the rear via headphones and mp3/other in the front via the normal stereo.. also navigation, 5.1 (center channel still needs a home but that's another story) and of course mp3 player as that's what the starting project is.. anybody know anything else that might be useful.. other than mp3/dvd/nav
------------------ Digital Designs 9515b Memphis 1000D Pioneer source MB Quart fronts ADS power plate (soon Adcom 4404) RW Audio processors LD4.12MBR Member of Team Hertz Canada
Posts: 735 | From: Calgary AB | Registered: Oct 1999
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Load times are rather minimal if you do it right. I have a 233 that boots windows 95 in 20 secs and shuts down in 15. If you are so impatient that you can't wait 20 secs, something is wrong. If you can hook it up to one of your buttons for your alarm, you should be ready to go by the time you get to the car.
I wouldn't use the pc to replace your HU. If something happens to your pc, you'll be musicless for a while. Plus you will have install a radio tuner into your pc. If you still want to use the CD player, you will need to hook the CD rom in the dash, but I dont think they make cables that long(im not sure). It would be cool, but not as convinient.
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