# silver bullet carputer build



## eviling

alright, this is my design - 










processor, is still in the air, i need to find one that has a knob for volume control. might be looking into something like a bit one. 

this is the gear list ----

*~ Helix C DSP Digital Sound Processor 

~ ZED Audio Leviathan 6 channel amp 6x230 watts RMS 

~ ZED Audio Minitour single channel 1000x1 watts RMS 

~ Hybrid Audio L4SE 

~ Hybrid Audio L1R2 Ring radiator tweeters 

~ Hybrid Audio L8V1 9" woofers 

~ FI IB318 (2x) 18" infinite Baffle sub's (500 watts to each) *

Preassembled Black Double Din LCD Frame with 7" Lilliput 669GL-70NP/C/T-HB-RV HDMI DVI High Brightness









hard drive for the OS and software ---- their will also be a 1.5 TB media hard drive, I've yet to figure out how to power all of the perifials. might get tricky. 
Newegg.com - Kingston HyperX SH100S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Stand-alone Drive)









motherboard, i went witht his one for it's size, and features, plus its just an exceptional system. what i didnt know when i ordered this, was it came with a media remote! a very nice one, with a mouse toggle on one side with volume and tracking, and a full keyboard on the other side, very slick, very well designed. 140$ for the features given is just extreme. very good system. 
Newegg.com - ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX AMD Motherboard









the CPU, well really its an APU, a GPU + CPU in one. it's a new thing AMD is working on, if you really wanna know more, the video explains allot on the page. 
Newegg.com - AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 6550D AD3850WNGXBOX









8gb DDR3 1866 dual channel ram, DIMM's not SO-DIMMS like the other version of the asus motherboard. 
Newegg.com - Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 Plug n Play Desktop Memory Model KHX1866C11D3P1K2/8G









slot style DVD rom (writes dvds too)
Newegg.com - Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 6X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW Black SATA Model AD-7690H-01 - CD / DVD Burners









external sound card, not needed but why not 
Newegg.com - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 70SB088600002 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Express x1 Interface Sound Card









power supply, I might be switching to this new 250 watt power supply that recently came out.
M2-ATX (160w) Intelligent DC-DC Car PC Power Supply


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## eviling

radio interface
Mp3Car BoomzBox HD Radio USB Controlled AM/FM Tuner









this is how i'll be attaching the DVD slot drive










the screen should fit right in, but im still considering fiberglassing the hole to make it larger so i can get a larger screen too, i'm not sure. 


now, the questions. from what i'm understanding, i was planning on using optic, because its a great transport, BUT now i'm reading and hearing that all the sound processors on the market can't digest the volume control data off of optic lines, so i might be limited in the sound processor i use from this. if anybody has any ideas or knows anything, please don't be shy.


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## eviling

few alterations. ive now changed a few things, i changed to a standard case, and am gonna build somethinga round it in the trunk. I also am switching to onboard sound processing. 

Newegg.com - M-AUDIO Delta 1010LT 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface 10-In-10-Out PCI Virtual Studio










since my motherboard has a PCI-e, i'll have to use a 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158165


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## eviling

Started the build. I’m still don’t have the PSU. I’m picking up a 250 watt car PSU in the future when the build is closer and i have more funding. I will be adding a 2nd HD internally a 3 TB low wattage 5400 rpm SATA III HDD. so it's 6 gb\s and it's low wattage, so it should be about as fast as a 7800 rpm drive I'm hoping is the way it math’s out XD


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## eviling

Powered up for first post. 









It failed  I forgot to plug in a keyboard. it's ok though it passed the rest of the post, CPU registered. ram registered. can't load windows onto the HD though  i do have the widows drive, the SSD you can also see that registered. i need a converter to a mini sata power plug for my dvd rom  we're looking good though it'll be here tomorrow. 










By the By, I do offer my services. in both building of high high end gaming rigs to extreme budget gamer rigs. or if you would like me to put one together.


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## FartinInTheTub

Looks cool! Subscribed!


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## eviling

alright some updates. i got the carputer loaded with widnows...shady key, i had the wrong one. working on getting a newer copy now lol just have to wait till i get to shcool monday to pick up a new key, i forgot to pick it up after class the other day because i lost my phone and was worried about that...never did find my phone though  had ti get a new one. 

anyways, got widnows up. gotsome software on, working on drivers for stuff. still dont have the right converter cable for the dvd rom, theones i ordered were sata micro not slimline sata so they didnt fit sigh. the 3 tb hard drive was dead on arival. never booted up in windows, working on getting that replced. i went with a baracuda, low rpm 5400 for low wattage but sata III so` it still retains the speeds i'll need, its just a media drive, the os boots off of the ssd. works very nicley, 15 second boot time. havnt finished setting up the software completley to boot with windows since i dont have a touch screen to use it with, it just has to be closed so i didnt set that up yet. anyways, enough rambling. heres some pictures. 










at first i had it hooked up to my main monitor on my gaming setup. but than it hought hmm i do have a 42" high def tv lets try that.  









so heres the tv









and as said tv hooked up  im acualy making this post off this right now  quite confy lol might have to build one of these just for a media center  so i can rrelax after work rather than sit up in a chaitr


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## Orion525iT

Pretty cool build. I also went after a Llano, but I ordered the A6-3500. Its only tri-core with low clock 2.1Ghz (2.4 turbo) but comes in at 65W TDP. Its a carputer, I am not crunching numbers. I went after a Gigabyte board because they all use the ALC 889 audio codec instead of the 892. The 889, although an older codec, has better signal to noise. The board I bought also has a 6 jack header. I also went for a mATX board for more expansion slots.

That breakout board is pretty cool, what are the line voltages?

I will most likely use a line driver with the on board audio.

Did you figure out the plugs needed for the slim slot load? My understanding all the slot loads are only designed for notebooks now and therefor need power and sata adapters.

Standard power supply with inverter or DC-DC converter?

I am trying to keep costs down, so am I going to try to run Linux Mint, non-touch screen and my android phone as a touch interface.


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## eviling

im not running the standard PSU with an inverter anymore. im gonna do a 250 watt 300 watt max power supply from mp3car.com i did math things out and i also tried a few automatic programs online to calculate my pulls. the cpu is 100 watt, the ssd is like 1 watt, 25 if running a cd, but i'll rarley use it. i'll also be running a second one externaly. it's gonna be a long sata run  and a ***** to power but i have an idea. i only need a 12v which i already have and a 5 volt, which i can get out of a small power block from mp3.com and power the 5v lead. they will run from just the 5v but better with both i believe. 

im a hardware guy and a very good one..but you just fliped my head for a min their. kudos lol what is this break board you speak of?


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## eviling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ3edmm_ez0&feature=youtu.be]centrafuse demo - YouTube


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## audiovibe

Coming together nicely! Just curious though what made you choose CF over the other front ends such as Ride Runner?


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## eviling

audiovibe said:


> Coming together nicely! Just curious though what made you choose CF over the other front ends such as Ride Runner?


i dont knjow much about these interfaces. but i do like this software, its not cheap either. i picked my initical license from another member who sold his rig to do something different i guess.


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## Orion525iT

Hate to say it (actually I don't care), but I really do think Windows 8 will go a long way into making front ends redundant. I am waiting for the public beta of 8 before I make any decisions. I just can't see spending $140? on separate software when one can license an entire OS for the same. Win 8 is less than a year from release.

I am messing with various Linux distros too. Although, none of them seem to be very happy with Llano systems right now. The hardcore Linux bobble heads have put the hate on the Unity interface in Ubuntu 11.10, but I am really starting to like it over Gnome, as Unity has multi-touch as a focus of design.

Just some things you might consider too before deciding on software.


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## eviling

Orion525iT said:


> Hate to say it (actually I don't care), but I really do think Windows 8 will go a long way into making front ends redundant. I am waiting for the public beta of 8 before I make any decisions. I just can't see spending $140? on separate software when one can license an entire OS for the same. Win 8 is less than a year from release.
> 
> I am messing with various Linux distros too. Although none of them seem to be very happy with Llano systems right now. Although the hardcore Linux bobble heads have put the hate on the Unity interface in Ubuntu 11.10, I am really starting to like it over Gnome, as Unity has multi-touch as a focus of design.
> 
> Just some things you might consider too before deciding on software.


heh, i got the centrafuse software for like 30-40$ i forget, I think we worked it into a deal and i get all OS"s for free as an IT student. and I'm fairly certain public 8 beta testing is out. and if you really want to talk redundant, windows 8 hasn't even hit the shelf and it just became obsolete with the new arcutexture that was just developed and is currently being tweaked for 3D processing, their' small, faster, lower power draw, and think on a whole new level we're not even familuar with when we thin about electronics, we think of solid state transistor’s doing on, of, on, off. but these new processors think in a 3rd level beyond on and off. it's going to change how software is developed completely. so theirs your insider scoop  but again, the cpu is ready, software is always behind, we still haven’t even caught up to quad cores and 8 core processing, we're barley utilizing dual core as we speak and our phones are utilizing them already. Imagine a phone with a 3.0ghz dual core processor, these are the kinds of leaps i'm talking about, but again, linux\unix are not written to utilize these new chips either. they'll probably end up tweaking it, or dropping the platform all together, all speculation of course here but if you want to talk about a waste of money, buy any computer in the next 5 year is a waste of money. this how ever has ran me roughly 700$ in computer parts, the screen i currently will be running ran me 150$ + 200$ sound card + 180$ software. so 1250$ for a complete transport system with a processor built in and my friend, my current deck is a 1200$ pioneer unit *not worth that anymore sadly* and i had planned on another 800$ processor, so where exact am wasting my money?  just some food for thought. 

if we wanted to be practical, we wouldn't be using digital because theirs always something new on the frontier, we'd be using all analog. 
of course carputers haven't been exposed to the masses quite yet, we're allot further along than i had thought before i began this project  I don't think we're to far off from the first car with windows\unix interface, in fact i'm sure google has some secrete R&D into some software for cars as we speak, as they'd be a perfect suiter for a software brand intergration into something like car, becuase a liviathan company like microsoft would cast to much of a shadow over a car brand and i don't think anybody would like that, google is like the UPS of the world, they are outspoken, we all know they're thier, but they almost vanish into the background with smart phones, even though they're leading the edge on all these smart phones, windows is finily catching up and apple. of course, with steve jobs gone who knows how their market branding will go, I don't honestly expect good things to come of what's transpired with his passing  it's a real loss to the computer comunity to loose a mind like his, like loosing walt disney's mind. let's just see if apple cna pull off disney land with out steve jobs


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## Orion525iT

Agreed, that software is hideously behind the hardware on all fronts when it comes to x86 platforms in general. Several years behind. Sad really. I think this is in part due to legacy issues. Still a lot of people out there on XP that can't properly use the new hardware in any case. The there is the frenetic pace of the mobile market. Lots of focus on arm/risc developement.

In car PCs are the perfect way to cram an OS down somebodies throat, and make the masses unaware of the invasion into free choice. I agree we are not far from that reality. It would most likely be some variant of Android because everybody is so use to it from mobile devices, and it has yet to gain the ire that Microsoft and now Apple (rightfully in both cases imho) have. Android just flies under the radar and does not seem offensive to anybody other than MS execs and dyed in the wool Apple fanboys.

Anyway...


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## eviling

Orion525iT said:


> Agreed, that software is hideously behind the hardware on all fronts when it comes to x86 platforms in general. Several years behind. Sad really. I think this is in part due to legacy issues. Still a lot of people out there on XP that can't properly use the new hardware in any case. The there is the frenetic pace of the mobile market. Lots of focus on arm/risc developement.
> 
> In car PCs are the perfect way to cram an OS down somebodies throat, and make the masses unaware of the invasion into free choice. I agree we are not far from that reality. It would most likely be some variant of Android because everybody is so use to it from mobile devices, and it has yet to gain the ire that Microsoft and now Apple (rightfully in both cases imho) have. Android just flies under the radar and does not seem offensive to anybody other than MS execs and dyed in the wool Apple fanboys.
> 
> Anyway...


lol but do you really want google becoming another micro$oft :laugh: company holdings are still centralized so it's still a fairly friendly company, but if they manopalize the mobile market we're boned and destined for yet another unflexible OS that is 5 years behind hardware. but than agin we already are, we need to start over with our software. japan redid their whole system, why can't we. ahh this is just getting to close to home for me XD haha i should stop talking hahahaha


back on topic! i REALLY want to find this damn in dash system the XENARC MDT-X7000™, but i can't find one anywhere, i found one that sold for 200$ BNIB 2 months ago on mp3car.com! :'( breaks my heart. i want this damn unit, it's PERFECT for my application and i'll be able to use my old custom single dash bezel i got 2 years ago  granted, the lettering is above the dinn so when the screen is out it'll be covered, i could order another one with the lettering below though


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## audiovibe

eviling said:


> I REALLY want to find this damn in dash system the XENARC MDT-X7000™, but i can't find one anywhere, i found one that sold for 200$ BNIB 2 months ago on mp3car.com! :'( breaks my heart. i want this damn unit, it's PERFECT for my application and i'll be able to use my old custom single dash bezel i got 2 years ago  granted, the lettering is above the dinn so when the screen is out it'll be covered, i could order another one with the lettering below though


To bad you weren't looking for one a year ago








I gave it to a friend that wanted to do a P.C. when I was tearing my last car apart.
didn't mean to break your heart again!
The was great Xenarc quality and very responsive, but if you want to use the DVD drive, volume knob or track buttons be prepared for frustration. Screen was great everything else is just clunky.


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## eviling

audiovibe said:


> To bad you weren't looking for one a year ago
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I gave it to a friend that wanted to do a P.C. when I was tearing my last car apart.
> didn't mean to break your heart again!
> The was great Xenarc quality and very responsive, but if you want to use the DVD drive, volume knob or track buttons be prepared for frustration. Screen was great everything else is just clunky.


could of been problamatic because you were using xp perhaps ? how does it interface for the volume and dvd? sata and usb?


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## eviling

just got the screen today, i did a little unboxing reveiw. working on setting it up now for some testing. sadly i dont have a proper DVI to VGA converter, i have one for my gaming rig i run my aux screen on, but its an older style with extra grounding prongs i guess, some reason this new board doesn't have those pin holes, so the adapter does not appear to fit i'll be testing it on my gamming rig though  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBczxKxYZD4]xenarc 700idt unboxing review - YouTube


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## eviling

well i'll be a son of a *****...it's dead


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## Orion525iT

I hate to piss in the cheerios, but my Gigabyte literature explicitly states that the DVI port (DVI-D) does not support D-sub via adapter. I would assume that it is the same for the Asus board even if they don't have it in print.

Sounds like your old gaming rig uses a DVI-I port. The difference is the DVI-D lacks the 4 analog pins of the DVI-I. The DVI-I was used so that people could still make use of their old analog displays with newer motherboards via adapter without having to physically add the VGA (D-sub) port to the board. 

Strangely, there appears to be DVI-D to VGA plugs around, but obviously an analog monitor cannot convert a digital signal, so I have know idea what they are used for.

My gigabyte board has d-sub, DVI-D, hdmi, and display port, so I am covered on all fronts. It wasn't really thinking about it at the time of purchase, but it does seem many of the small lcds are still analog.


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## eviling

Gefen DVI-to-VGA Converter EXT-DVI-2-VGAN B&H Photo Video lol uhmm...


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## eviling

so your saying this adapter won't work? 
by the way, the "old" gaming rig runs a gtx 570  not to old. the adapter is old, from oen of my first video cards. it stayed with the monitor  but the adpter works in the 570 so idk why this asus doesnt support analog conversion? so your saying this adapter wont work i'd need something like what i linked up above? 

TecNec Cables & Connectors DVI-D Dual Link Male to VGA Female Adapter DVI Adapters & Converters at Markertek.com


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## audiovibe

Even for CD use the unit wasn't the best. I used XP, Vista, and 7 with the unit, with all OS the quirks were the same. The thing I really liked about the unit was the ability to tilt the screen to rid it of sun glare, that itself would have been worth paying for the unit. The screen is also great, very responsive and has a decent brightness and neutral contrast. As long as you keep to the on screen buttons in CF the unit will shine, its once you start using the hard buttons that you will be disappointed in the unit. a better way to put it is that's when the unit started to become a disappointment to me.

All interfacing for vol. front usb, and tracking is done over USB, I cant recall but I think I had one of the guys at the Chicago MP3Car meets map my track buttons.

The volume knob just had a real bad delay. as long as you use the mapped buttons on CF to control the master volume in windows you will be fine with it. Happened with both disc and PC operation.

The DVD drive was just noisy for daily use and took forever to spool up CDs and DVDs probably about 30-45 seconds. Happened with both disc and PC operation.

The track joystick was just flimsy and sometimes it would not register input on the first click. happened on both disc and PC operation.

I am not trying to deter you from buying this unit because it really shines as a monitor, I'm just letting you know some of the issues I had with it.

BTW conversing back and forth with you is really making me want to go back to using a PC.


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## wenwen2me

wow~ so much! Thanks for sharing.


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## eviling

i was mistaken, the screen works fine. it wasn't working because apprently my gtx 570 also doesn't put out a d-sub signal, it's all digital even though it has DVI - i prongs. its still all digital. looks like i'm gonna have to use an analog video card  whcih means i'll have to use external processing i guess


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## eviling

been doing some research. my power contraints are pretty tight, so i've come up with a video card that has an extremley low wattage draw










Newegg.com - XFX GM-210M-ZNF2 GeForce 210 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

stupid cheap, xfx is great stuff, ive never had a problemw ith them at alllll and thier warentys rock. i had a 8800 gts 320 for 6 years and its sitll beaitng like a champ, reseated the heatsink awhile abck with some upgraded thermal paste. 

anyways, that' sthe rout i think i'll go, should get rid of some of that glichyness you see in the interface too, i dont think amd did to hot with the intergraded APU CPU | GPU thing, just seems kind wonky i guess, or maybe its the software, ive never benched this system yet.


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## eviling

ordewred the video card. also upgraded to 4.0 with built in gps rather than the garmin, might as well do an intergrated gps. im having a couple wonky errors witgh centrafuse, need to tweak it out but ima do a fresh install and do everything properly now that i have all the software and stuff 

multi tasking like a ****ing pro baby


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## eviling

pwned. got the software up and running, FINILY figuired how to set everything up, the software is pretty goofey, it likes to get stuck on dumb things and never forget about it..like a problem importing a serial file. but i got that problem worked out, got it all installed, GPS software is now BUILT into the software so no 3rd party but i just don't know :\ feels really weird, and doesn't seem to notice my GPS module. sigh didnt know just setting up software would be this big of a pain but i'm glad i have all this free time before i begin the install to work this stuff out  normaly i would of just threw this in and went with it XD but i'm workig on some stuff,took me 3 weeks before i got the damn DVD rom working. not gonna use that style of loader i dont think, although i wish i could, it's just WAYYYYYYYYYYYY TO LOUD, in fact if i ran the one out of the trunk i'm afraid it'd create some noise on my lines in a comp so i dont know why i even have one on the case XD just for ****s and giggles i guess. but anyways, 18k songs, out of 22k is allot better than the 12k that 3.5 found, 4.0 came with some mp4 codex support. as well as apple product application support, i beleive i can run an iphone through it, not sure. i need to pick up some other stuff, need to set up the radio as well, i think that'll be my next hurtle to work on figuiring out that. shoudlnt be hard, the hard part will be intergrating it into my centrfuse software i think.


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## Orion525iT

At least you have a work around. Gotta ask why you decided on a dedicated card over picking up another motherboard with d-sub. I suppose the dedicated card may be far less expensive. But considering your power restrictions, I would have thought that using the APU as it is designed would have been a better option. One of the true benefits of Llano is extremely low power use at idle and and very good consumption at load when compared to processor + dedicated card. I think my Llano board was 89$.

In regards to the slot load, I have also heard they are very loud. I don't think I will go that route lol. It is a question of if one is actually needed, especially if you move all your media to the HD. I guess you could still install it, but only use it when needed to load media. Have you tried any sound absorption around it? In any case, the slot loads are far more prone to failure when compared to a tray. I really like the aesthetics of the slot load, but the issues may not be worth the extra money or effort. 

Hopefully the Centrafuse will work out ok. One of my biggest issues with Linux distros is all the tweaking needed. For all the time I have spent trying to get various issues sorted, I could have bought Windows 10x over. So a "free" OS does not feel so free anymore. Not that Windows doesn't have issues, but Win 7 is darn good, and I have not had any hardware issues. Again, I think Win 8 will be a game changer and may render front ends redundant. 

gl hf.


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## eviling

i think you're being quite hopefull about windows 8. we've all had these asperations when an OS comes out. i mean if we went windows 98 to 7 we'd be jizzing our pants, but things happen in steps. we had XP which streamlined things...than vista with kernals and yada yada, than vista to 7 was just a shell change to most users (complete different arcutexture i'm sure) but really i'm really enjoying centrafuse. it's just the install process was a bit of a pain, and the tech support is well..not really all that their, at least for a ask response standpoint. you can submit tickets and they do responde very well, but not having instant responses just makes troubleshooting such a *****. i have 30 questions for them right now that i have to work out on my own and ask 3 to them.

the reason i didn't switch is because well...i wanted to demanstrate you can go big in a car, it just takes the right persaverence. i'm an excentrek computer builder, a 12" video card isn't out of the normal for me, i deal with high end stuff every time i do something and that's just how i do it. i enjoy seeing the higher end of things and having better stuff than everyone else  it's nice ot be on top. the longer you have it sadly, the lower you become XD but the main reason i didn;t switch to the old asus delux with the AMD older style sotkcet and standard CPU was simply because...i'd never sell these pieces, ive been trying to sell stuff for MONTHS, but nothing is moving. nothinnnng.


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## eviling

lol came home to several packages, ive been off work since 1 and i havnt sat down till now. ****ing christ does life just bite sometimes >_< tireeeeeeed

anyways, got the hard drive replacment for my house computer, it's a nice little all in one touchsmart from HP, it's a POS, i got it on the 2nd of nov and it just started showing a "iminate hard drive faulure" warning, spent 2 HOURS ON TECH SUPPORT with HP to tell them what i already knew...and that's that i needed a hard drive. FFS that guy told me EVERY detail...i ended up just telling him to stfu and asked if he processed the RMA and shipped the hard drive and hung up lol i hate tech support, especily when they don't get that you knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww computers. 

pretty interesting process, surprisenly easy. i expected easy but not this easy. took 2 screws and pop came the plate, very nice. very nice efficiant design too. it was a pleasure to work on, they did use some nice looking parts. 









came with a nice little manual 










back on topic, got the video card today, just finished installing it and it's drivers. 


















glammer shot









is a really nice looking video card for 35$ you can't beat it  

works fine, displayed on the screen great. rigth now i'm waiting on this to start playing with the touchscreen  damn you windows update. damn you :'(


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## eviling




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## eviling

i've been wracking my brain over this for a few weeks now. and this is the MOST streamline layout i can do for my front end with out running MULTIBLE runs of USB. this way, i run one main run, with an externaly powered hub (so that my motherboards PSU doesn't get pulled on) i'll be using either a single or a double relay setup depending on feedback, persoanly I felt 2 was needed but after laying it out and reading it over 1 did make sense, if i just get a higher current one. I dasie chains them so that the curent for both the coils wouldn't be on the remote line, since that line will being drawn on by the amps turn on cicrcuits as well as the carputers, which i already am wiring a second relay for. so that relay will be getting the coil of the first relay than that first relay will turn on the 2nd one of the front end topology, but like i said, i doubt i'll do the 3 relay setup, just the one for the amp\computer load and one for the front end load. feedback is great though don't be shy










OR, i could power it like this, i need to find out if the current of that hub can support the DVD rom, i expect it wants at least 15 watts, looks like it wants 16 gauge wire, that should be plenty of power. 











this is how the DVD rom will be mounted, i'll be doing that mod my self. its a pretty simple mod. i just need ot use an external laptop style hard drive, take off the shell and power it up  











edit - just a slight topology change up


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## eviling

I have an idea to use the dragon voice reccicnition software as a media for voice control in my car, ive seen it done in a guys build on mp3car.com i talked to him about how he did it, i forget how he got the switch button he uses to activate the computer to recieve the comand, i imagine its via a USB interface some way shape or form i'm not sure how the software works, but it's gonna be a nice little addition to the carputer. trying to give it as many features as a normal deck as possible, in fact i bleiev i have pretty much everything covered. i have a pot for volume control, radio, bluetooth, phone, nav, and the powerful computer that can do many other tasks, as well as tune and calibrate the system internal with out using a tablet or laptop


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## LGHT_

Very interesting post. I'm on the hunt for a new DD unit and instead of dropping a ton of money for a unit I may try and go this route since I have tons of hardware just laying around from various HTPC builds. Plus i've been in the IT industry since the early 90's and have a good understand of everything your talking about. Not to mention I have a truck with tons of space to hide the PC. 

I may drive by Xenarc since they are only about 10 min away from me and see how their setup works. Ironically the gefen adaptor your considering is made by a buddy of mine John who owns the company. He does a lot of stuff for presentation and display setups at conventions so having his head to pick will be a great resource. Hopefully I can get something going pretty soon since I pretty much have several pc's just laying around waiting to be put to use.


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## eviling

wooo it breaths life on 12v for the first time! Lol idk why this got me excited but it did. i'm sitll trying to find me a copy of xp and a key, i lost my iso's and i can't find my list of windows pid's  i have them somwhere just can't find them sigh. so currently its not setup, im switching to xp because in my blunder i didn't realise the sound card only worked up to xp


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## LGHT_

eviling said:


> I have an idea to use the dragon voice reccicnition software as a media for voice control in my car, ive seen it done in a guys build on mp3car.com i talked to him about how he did it, i forget how he got the switch button he uses to activate the computer to recieve the comand


I've been using naturally speaking for almost 10 years and the first version would only do dictation. Just plug in a headphone / mic to the port in on the pc and your done. The current version actually allows me to control the operating system and specific apps like Outlook. I can say "start mail" which opens Outlook and then say "new message" or reply to message etc. 

Another thing you need to know is if you setup the dragon remote mic app you can use your iphone to speak the commands into if it's connected to the pc via wifi. I won't bother with that, but will just use a lapel mic connected to my visor as I do now for my cell phone.


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## ganesht

eviling said:


> I will be adding a 2nd HD internally a 3 TB low wattage 5400 rpm SATA III HDD. so it's 6 gb\s and it's low wattage, so it should be about as fast as a 7800 rpm drive I'm hoping is the way it math’s out XD


Why would it be as fast as a 7.8k drive? its a 5.4 green drive? the extra sata bandwidth wont matter on a platter drive..

btw you should check the g limit while the drive is powered, most desktop drives are must more sensitive to shock than their mobile counterparts.

otherwise the build is looking really nice!



eviling said:


> motherboard, i went witht his one for it's size, and features, plus its just an exceptional system. what i didnt know when i ordered this, was it came with a media remote! a very nice one, with a mouse toggle on one side with volume and tracking, and a full keyboard on the other side, very slick, very well designed. 140$ for the features given is just extreme. very good system.


any photos of the remote?


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## LGHT_

You might be able to get away with a standard drive if it's mounted on rubber grommets to help stop the shock. For me I'm going with a SS drive for the OS and a big 100+ GB flash drive for data. I don't think I'll really need much more than that, but if I do I simply add a 2nd flash drive.


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## eviling

ganesht said:


> Why would it be as fast as a 7.8k drive? its a 5.4 green drive? the extra sata bandwidth wont matter on a platter drive..
> 
> btw you should check the g limit while the drive is powered, most desktop drives are must more sensitive to shock than their mobile counterparts.
> 
> otherwise the build is looking really nice!
> 
> 
> 
> any photos of the remote?


you bring up a good point. i'll look into that, but i think i'll be fine, but i'll keep it in mind if it has problems i'll know where to look. the bandwith does make a 5400 sata III faster than a 5400 sata II, if a 5400 is as fast as a 7200 on sata II, i can't honestly tell you, damn way they market these drives makes figuiring out speeds a pain in the ass and i wasn't worried about speed with the data drive, its plenty fast. in fact it was very fast, i was very pleased with it for the week i had it hooked up to the touch screen. i just made a bunch of sales and i have a side job for a couple hundred bucks, so i'll be finishing up some orders, maybe pick up the rest of the woof for the build, need bondo and some materials too for the front end fiberglassing. 




























I may or may not of accidently thrown away those wifi antennas, but i'll probobly use a roof mountible unit, i did see some stuff online, i need to do more research into it, ive also found industrial grade bluetooth dongles, but it was like 200$ idk if ima drop 200$ on a BT dongle. lol 


I thought i posted this, but i did finily getting it running off a 12v battery. i was having issues with it turning off, turned out this beast wants like 12 amps, and most ballast, even large ones are 3 amps, after a long argument with mp3car.com i realised my mistake  quite embarising, but i might still have power issues, i havnt been able to finish setup because i formated to install xp instead of 7 because the sound card doesnt suppport 7, but i havnt been able to find my xp stuff  i just need to wait till school starts to pick up some copys of stuff. oh well but not a big setback im still weeks from install. i am exceptionaly close to the wattage limit of the power supply, it cant spare the power external via the usb, i might just run 1 usb to a extenraly powered USB, to help resolve that if it becomes an issue. i havnt tested it on a charged battery, it booted jsut fine off my cars old battery thats hasnt been charged in a year and a half and has sat in cold. so who knows how much juice that thing has in it, once i get it tested on a charged battery i'll find out what i need to do.


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## felix509

It has been a couple years since my last carputer build, but building a new one now.. 

One thing you might want to check is your amount of RAM. If I remember correctly, When Windows Hibernates/sleeps, which it will do every time you turn key off in your car, it saves everything currently on RAM to a file on the HD.... 

So the more RAM you have, the bigger the Hibernate file. On Resume, Everything in that file will be restored to the RAM, making for longer resume times..

Of course using SSD may make this completely irrelevant, as it will restore that file pretty quick.

G'Luck with the build


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## MarkZ

LGHT_ said:


> You might be able to get away with a standard drive if it's mounted on rubber grommets to help stop the shock. For me I'm going with a SS drive for the OS and a big 100+ GB flash drive for data. I don't think I'll really need much more than that, but if I do I simply add a 2nd flash drive.


Shouldn't have any issues with shock. I've been using regular drives in cars for 11 years (except for a 2 year span where I was using laptop drives) and never had problems. Heat is a way bigger factor IMO.

I'm curious where you're getting such a large flash drive though. That would be a great solution if you can find them at a reasonable price.

BTW, are you guys having trouble with standby? I'm not seeing why hard drive speeds are of any consequence for this application...


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## LGHT_

MarkZ said:


> I'm curious where you're getting such a large flash drive though. That would be a great solution if you can find them at a reasonable price.


You can get a slower usb 2.0 128gb drive for around $150 it's the newer usb 3.0 128gb drives with much higher transfer speeds that start at around $250. For mp3 storage you don't need usb 3.0 or good speed so just get the cheap ones.


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## MarkZ

Yeah, $150 is still high for these. It would be a sweet solution though. I am, however, curious about some of the reliability concerns that I've heard about. Not like device failure, but rather, data corruption. Any word on if there are improvements here?


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## eviling

LGHT_ said:


> You can get a slower usb 2.0 128gb drive for around $150 it's the newer usb 3.0 128gb drives with much higher transfer speeds that start at around $250. For mp3 storage you don't need usb 3.0 or good speed so just get the cheap ones.


your forgeting one key thing here though, even expensive flash drives hate shocks, flash drives are natoriouse for crashing, and with the spikes of voltage bound to come out of the usb port, it's a really bad idea, im very much a computer nerd and i dont own a single memory stick, their just unreliable, i know they can be...but ive yet to hold onto flash memory more than 3 years my self, which makes it useless to me. i just dont want to see somebody drop a 150$ oin a thumb drive, than when it crashes after a month of start ups and shut downs in your car. i honestly don't even like ssd's ive switched to them in the past and had them crash relativley fast under low pressure situations, those were mid range class drives, the one i have now is elite class compared to that one, so we'll see. i'm sure it'll last awhile but i sitll don't have much faith in them.


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## MarkZ

eviling said:


> your forgeting one key thing here though, even expensive flash drives hate shocks, flash drives are natoriouse for crashing, and with the spikes of voltage bound to come out of the usb port, it's a really bad idea, im very much a computer nerd and i dont own a single memory stick, their just unreliable, i know they can be...but ive yet to hold onto flash memory more than 3 years my self, which makes it useless to me. i just dont want to see somebody drop a 150$ oin a thumb drive, than when it crashes after a month of start ups and shut downs in your car. i honestly don't even like ssd's ive switched to them in the past and had them crash relativley fast under low pressure situations, those were mid range class drives, the one i have now is elite class compared to that one, so we'll see. i'm sure it'll last awhile but i sitll don't have much faith in them.


I hadn't heard that part. I use a flash drive as the "OS disc" for my home machine and never have a problem -- the flash drive is always plugged in, but hardly ever used. My understanding is that the reliability issues come only from data corruption during read/writes (especially writes). So people generally recommend not writing to them extensively. I had never heard about shocks or electrical issues. I can't think of what could physically be responsible for shock issues.


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## eviling

MarkZ said:


> I hadn't heard that part. I use a flash drive as the "OS disc" for my home machine and never have a problem -- the flash drive is always plugged in, but hardly ever used. My understanding is that the reliability issues come only from data corruption during read/writes (especially writes). So people generally recommend not writing to them extensively. I had never heard about shocks or electrical issues. I can't think of what could physically be responsible for shock issues.


when you unplug the device, the computer imediatley shuts down the voltage, but if your pulling it out just right, the drive will feel that dip in voltage and it can courrpt the formating on the driver or something, idk if solid state work the same way but ive had **** results on lengevity with them in the past, ive yet to try thew newer ones which have a new arcutexture i'm sure by now. we'll see about those but thumb drives are just a bad idea for reliable rebooting drive like a car. its just gonan be rebooting so much, it might send out a low voltage dip to the thumb drive once and bloomp dead.


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## LGHT_

Never had a problem with a flash drive ever. I recall the big issue is people would simply "unplug" them instead of going to the safely remove hardware wizard to stop the device first. I still have a 256mb pny stick that is almost 10 years old now and I only keep it because I paid over $200 for it at the time. However I have been given chip knock off drives during conferences etc and those fail after a few uses. Like all things you get what you pay for and if your using drives made from chip memory chips they will fail.


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## eviling

LGHT_ said:


> Never had a problem with a flash drive ever. I recall the big issue is people would simply "unplug" them instead of going to the safely remove hardware wizard to stop the device first. I still have a 256mb pny stick that is almost 10 years old now and I only keep it because I paid over $200 for it at the time. However I have been given chip knock off drives during conferences etc and those fail after a few uses. Like all things you get what you pay for and if your using drives made from chip memory chips they will fail.


wel yeah thats the whole point, the tech isnt at a point where its truley convenient. the problem is the same problems that occur when you suddenly unplug it can happen when you suddenly turn your computer on and off. it may of been resolved who knows but ive yet to hear different or comvinced otherwise, but i have a big plan for my gaming rig that will be a solid state rig.


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## MarkZ

As I mentioned earlier, I think it's very much use-dependent. Writes are bad. Reads are fine. I found this cnet article that echos this:



http://www.cnet.com.au/reliability-of-usb-flash-drives-questioned-240063522.htm said:


> "A limited number of write/erase cycles are possible before failure occurs, and while high-end flash drives will support several million cycles, cheaper devices are more unpredictable," Toloo said.
> ...
> "Under optimal conditions, the lifespans of [SanDisk] USB flash drives can be up to
> 10 years or more when used like a CD-R; when used like a CD-RW, the
> lifespan may vary."


So, using it as a media drive makes a lot of sense because your operations will be reads. Using it as a traditional OS drive wouldn't. As I mentioned before, I use mine in my always-on file server at home as a boot drive into the OS, where it's ONLY read from.

The power cycle issue that eviling brings up is interesting. It makes sense, but I don't see any mention of it in any of these reports.

Edit: FWIW, during the wintertime my ipod shuffle is permanently plugged into my carPC, except when I bring it inside to transfer new music. It's basically acting as a thumb drive. No problems yet, and it's been there for a few winters.


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## eviling

an ipod uses different flash memory than a thumb drive, apple uses top grade parts in everything.


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## quietfly

eviling said:


> an ipod uses different flash memory than a thumb drive, apple uses top grade parts in everything.


Actually, currently apple uses crap. They have really downgraded the quality of there parts bin in the last 10 years. the EXTERNAL fit and finish is still great, but internally they have taken a step back, because there customer base for the most part doesn't need the high end parts they used to offer. case in point the DA's they use now are NOTABLY inferior to the ones they used in the older classic iPods.


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