Ok, now it's done... have been away for a whilem but now iv'e mounted the display in the car. This is pretty much what i see when driving... what do you think ?
well my car wont but you have a very very nice car ah well hopefully i can achive a car that nice some day
I am working on something similar for my ford ranger. I am going to make a custom case, and I found a stripped down motherboard that will handle a decent processor (p3/celeron) and has composite and svideo out built on (and I got it for $8!) I found a display http://www.overclockershideout.com/...re_Code=o&Product_Code=5UTLT&Category_Code=DE that I plan on using... Im going to run 12v battery leads to the display and bring another set underneath the drivers seat for the computer itself. Since the motherboard just has usb and no ps2, serial or parallel, I am going to put a hub with gps and 802.11b under the seat and run an extension up to the dash to add another 4 port hub to plug in the keyboard and mouse. (keyboard http://www.plycon.com/slimminiusb.htm probably a trackball mouse) The case for the computer is going to be made of plexiglass and will be as slim as possible. I am working on a way to suspend the hard drive to prevent skipping, the dvdrom will be next to the hard drive. There is going to be a DC - DC converter so I can regulate the 12 volts to the power supply and then I am going to have to write some hardware for a shutdown timer etc. I hope to have the project started in december and finished before February. I think I will have enough money and all of the parts by then. I am really excited about the project though!
To supspend the harddrive you could make a plexi box to hold the drive then mount it via-springs and buffers into another box. I plan on doing this for my Car Mp3 player. I need to get back to work on it, haven't for a month now. Stupid IBM laptop is high quality but hard to get the sound working in DOS. www.mp3car.com's forums has tons of info.
Don't try and build shock absorption into your drive enclosure. It'll cause more problems than it solves. Use (a modern) laptop drive which has some degree of shock absorption built in.
You might check out www.silentpcreview.com. They've got some tips related to suspension (more for reducing noise, but would still work).
I've been looking into using solid state storage, but there are issues about the number of times it can be written to before being rendered useless.
Doesnt solid state also need a constant supply of power as the solid state memory used in computer storage is RAM? and not ROM?
Some do, some don't. Eg RAM as you said on the one hand, on the other flash disks like those used for digicams, MP3 players etc
Um... just wondering... do you know how much more it would cost to buy a 1 gb compact flash card and interface it as a hard drive than using a hard drive out of an old comuter and cushoning it with rubberbands? S*** dude you need to think before you start typing. My project is going to maximize productivity AND minimize cost. The most expensive thing in the entire project is going to be the display. Everything else is cheap. And solid state ram costs a s***load. Have fun with that!
oh, **** sorry, dude, yea, **** I'm really sorry! I might propose you the same, as you have not said it in your original post.
as for the issue of power regulation: From what I've read, starting a car can cause an extreme positive voltage spike, and shutting off causes a similar reverse spike, so it's probably best to regulate, even if you're not sure you'll need it. I'm quite sure that mp3car.com has info that will make it easy on the forums. For storage, I've heard (as bradford mentioned) that trying to absorb shock can be a mixed blessing at best. A better solution is probably to get a good, modern laptop drive and secure it firmly in the case. Maybe mount the entire case on top of a thin pad or something.
uuuhhh http://peeweelinux.com/order.html cf to ide... but a 1gb cf card is damn expensive - more than the entire project with an ide hard drive....
Just for your info, I am doing something that has not been done yet. I have a couple of old 10-16gig drives that are normal IDE. But I want to use a laptop to power my Car-MP3 Player. So I am hacking my own adapter to allow a normal IDE drive to work in a laptop. DONT post pics of the 2.5-5.25 adapter! I am using it, but it's not a 1-1 connection when going backwards.