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Im just curious as to what people are doing about hard drives for their Carputer. I mean your car is jossling the hard drive around when your going down the street.. so what solutions are there so the hard drive doesnt crap out?

Also what are some good dashbored programs?

 
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You might want to look into making a carputer that boots off a USB thumb drive or a memory card. You can get a 1GB drive for a decent price.

Or find a way to mount the carputer so that it won't absorb a hard bump. (ie. foam spacers)

 
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Try this site they have alot of good info about carputers and they have an online store. http://www.mp3car.com/

 
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Yeah ive been fooling around over there, just was wondering what people were using.

 
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If you can fit a PCI card, there is a device called iRAM which will let you install up to 8gb of solid state storage, super fast too

 
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i had Jl 12w7 and Jl 1000/1 in my car, when i had carputer and i had no problems. I used regular laptop drive 2.5"

 
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Nice.. just was wondering.

 
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or if you got money to burn.. there is PURAM technology which will allow 600gb of solid state harddrive space. Most car puters to include ICON and a few other makers are basically laptop harddrives which are designed to handle so many g forces before a hardware malfunction

 
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I vote laptop hard drive.

 
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People this day thing to damn hard.... There is going to we a SUV in a car show this weekend in daytona beach. It has 12 10" woofers in it. And all the the music is processed thru computer in the car. SO ya those 2.5" HD can hold.

 
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Well luckaly i have a 2.5 40 gig laying around.. I just need an 2.5 to ide coverter then... And a dc dc power supply and my equipment for the carputer will almost be done!

 
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check out icon or carmp3 for those parts and you should be set.

 
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Yeah I also use the laptop drive on my car, never had a problem yet and it has been in there for a little over a year now. You asked about programs. For programs I am running Frodo Player as the front end, I also have Phoncontrol to work my cell phone thru my car speakers, wireless internet cards and bluetooth cards, and a few other programs that have slipped my mind at the moment. I would also like to get a program to tie the ecu readings into a monitor soon. I have found a few, just can't remember the names off the top of my head. Good luck with the rest of your build, you will enjoy it once you are done.

 
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Do a laptop hard drive...

 
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Doing the lappy top hard drive lol.. Plus im working on setting up the computer and all kinds of good stuff. ill start posting some pictures when i get everything.. Just need a monitor.. ANy suggestions?

 
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I run a lilliput monitor and it has worked excellent for me, or Xenarc monitors are supposed to be really good. Here are a couple pictures of the lilliput in the dash, The fiberglass work is a little rough since these are from when I had it roughed in to see if I liked it or not, I will have to get some new pictures of it now that it is finished.









and one of my car since I don't think I have ever posted it on here.

 
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I've had my carputer almost a year now with an 80GB laptop hard drive running and holding everything. It's sitting in my trunk with a huge sub pounding almost all the time, and as of my last disk check not one bad sector.
I was reading up on flash memory before but apparently many formats of flash memory have a limited read-write capacity, which does not bode well if you're running windows off it.
At the very least, keep Windows (or whatever OS you use) on a laptop hdd and then keep your media like videos or music on a usb key.
I recommend Opus for a DC-DC power supply but there have also been a pair of new PSU's released by members of mp3car.com that have been getting good reviews. I may try the DS-ATX after all the positive posts on that board...

Xenarc, no question. The 7" model molds very well into our consoles:



I'm thinking about getting one more non-touchscreen, and placing it in the passenger sun visor then extending the windows desktop.

 
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Telly your monitor looks good, I wish I would have recessed mine when I had done it, do you get much sun glare with it recessed? I have also had mine in for about a year now. I have heard that the Xenarc monitors are they way to go, just had already bought my lilliput before I saw the reviews, but I am happy to say so far I haven't had any problems. Also for location of my computer I have everything inside the dash behind the monitor, I am only running a 40gb hard drive at the moment, but plan on adding 2 300gb hard drives in the near future so I can add my whole mp3 and movie collection to it.

 
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im looking into doing this also, but with a apple powerbook. now do you need a HU still cause i really dont want to have one relocated. i would rather it be not there at all. also how would i get sound out of the computer? headphone jack to rca adaptor to my amp to my speakers? im a n00b with radio stuff.

 
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CenZ You can do it with out a headunit. That is the way I have mine setup. You will need to run an amp for the sound. You have the right idea on this you would use a 3.5mm to rca adapter or cable witch you can pick up at wal-mart, radio shack....etc... Below is a link of one from mp3car.com for an example. The cable would just run from the headphone jack straight to the RCA inputs of your amp.

http://www.mp3car.com/store/product_...f93a790c5389a1

 
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sweet. then all i need is that cable, the screen and the thingy to turn it on and off when i turn on and off the car...

 
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That sounds right.

Also for anyone that is interested in performance here is a link for a program that takes what your ECU reads and displays it on your computer.

http://www.autotap.com/

 
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Thanks! Depending on the sun's angle relative to the car I do get some glare, generally right around high noon. I can still see though, just takes a tiny bit of squinting. Because it's recessed more at the bottom than at the top I am actually looking at the screen at almost the perfect angle...the only way I can look at it dead on is to straddle the shifter I'm afraid, LOL. I was going to angle it to face me as well but then my girl wouldn't be able to see. I kind of eyeballed the angle on this one, but I'm working on a second console - FG instead of bondo this time - and I'm gonna actually use MATH (can you believe it) to calculate the perfect angle. Ah yes, who'da thought education would actually be useful?
Just remember that the 3.5" HDD's (no laptop HDD comes as big as 300GB AFAIK) use more power than the 2.5'ers. With my current setup my Opus would be powering down every 2 minutes due to the draw....I'm walking the fine line of overloading my PSU right now cause I was greedy and went straight for a P4 on a microATX board. As for keeping it behind the dash, just try to keep it in an area where air can come in, as heat will eventually kill your parts.
CenZ, I'm not sure about the powerbook but I speak for Windows laptop users here - you could technically run from your laptop's 1.8" out, using an RCA adapter, into a 2-channel amp (or 4/5-channel if your soundcard is surround-enabled). The big problem is that if you start the car before the computer and the amp is on, you're going to get horrible engine noise at the gain level you've set the amp to, until the computer is turned on and the sound card functioning. Unless you really know what you're doing, running into a head unit will save you some heartache. I recommend reading up on mp3car, they have a ton of posts on your very question.

 
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what you mean engine noise? im not very good with the whole audio stuff, but i am very good with computers, macs not so much but decent. how would i turn on my amp and pc before the car anyway?

 
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I almost did mine on an angle facing me as well, but decided against it for the same reason. I get horrible glare at high noon with it not being recessed but it is still functional for me. Yeah I used fiberglass on mine then used fiberglass jelly to fill in any imperfecitons for the final work. On the hard drives I won't be using them for operating system so I am not to worried about them not being laptop harddrive, but the power is an issue I am going to be working with for sure. I agree everything in the dash is risky do to heat issues, but I used two fans to help control the heat (one blowing in and one blowing out) I also have a temperature sensor that is set to turn off the computer if the temperature reaches a certain temperature to help eliminate damaging something do to over heating.

I agree with Telly that the easiest way to get clean sound would be with keeping a headunit, It can be done without, but it can be done. I am running multiple amps, equalizers, and ground loop isolater amongst other things to help eliminate unwanted noise in my setup.

CenZ I just used the wiring adapter for hooking up a CD Player to power my computer and amps, I used the Aux wire to turn them on as the CD Player would when you turn your key on.

 
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uhuh.... alright. i guess thats not that big of a deal i can reinstall my XM unit then... since im still paying for it and i havent had it in my car for like a year

 
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heres what i did....
well first i had to find a case for my carput since its going to be mounted in the trunk.. so i went and found a broken xbox and just made a few modifications to fit a mini itx mobo.... blah blah blah.. and did some usb modifications..
but onto the hard drive

i went and got a laptop hard drive and made a plastic enclosure so basically its a laptop hard drive enclosed in a plastic case that boots via usb. that way i can make it portable..

but if you are looking for something quick and easy (and cheap) you can just go to staples and get a usb portable hard drive since those are pretty durable.... or the REALLY EXPENSIVE route would be to buy solid state flash drive though the largest ive ever seen is 8gb... though if your good enough you can buy several of them and put them together and if you install something linke linux as your OS there are options you can take.

my recommendation would be to just us a usb removable hard drive because they are ment to be portable and take that kind of endurance.. but only use that for your meda (movies,music, whatever else) and get a small solid state flash for your main operating system.

thats how i would do it if i were to redo my system.
or you could just buy a laptop

 
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Honestly, I've been using a standard seagate 120gb harddrive for over a year now and I've never had a problem. Laptop HD is nice because it draws less power, but I wanted to save the money, so I just went for the regular old thing. Mounted it verticly though, that will help.