[Getshocked.ca]

BTW those are Canadian Prices

 

[bigtrouble77]

A system like that may be a bit too powerful for an insight. I personally would go with a micro atx, like one of those shuttle XPCs. You're gonna want it to be small anyway.

I finally hooked up my Athlon64 3700 laptop directly to the DC outlet with no issues, but the laptop has a battery backup so it may be stable when a desktop machine wouldn't. I would buy the electronics (inverter?) for the power and see if you can stabily run your regular PC in the car.

You also may want to look for a case that has shock protectors for the HD. Regular IDE/SATA drives are not designed to take the same amount of shock as a laptop drive, plus they generally run constantly which could be a major issue if you hit a pot hole.

Finally, what do you plan to use it for? For the amount of money your planning on spending you may be better off picking up a used laptop from ebay and buying a laptop mount. You won't have the touch screen, but you'll have a keyboard and a touch pad.

-BT

 

[Getshocked.ca]

The motherboard listed above is a Micro Atx board (MATX)

When your laptop is plugged in it shouldnt be drawing any power off the laptop battery (which is good news to me since you are running a higher system)

I plan to use it for

DVD
GPS Navigation
MP3
Fun Gadget / project

All together this is cheaper then a decent indash LCD Deck, and this will be capable of a heck of alot more

Hmmm the hard drive thing is interesting, I could design something to smooth the bumps ,,,

 

[dazey]

I'm just trying to figure out what you would do with that much computing power in a car. I know it's getting harder to find retail CPUs under 2GHz now, but why 64bit and a gig of RAM other than the cool factor? I'm not saying it would be bad (it would be a kick-*** system 8) after all), just a little overkill for something to play music, movies, and "war driving".

I've been looking at the Mini-ITX boards, and now the Nano-ITX (same page)(only 12cmx12cm) Most of these boards have built-in audio, video, LAN, and MPEG decoding, and a lot are fanless. They're kind of like an Insight, small, quiet, and efficient :wink: They don't offer much above the 1GHz mark, but you can also get away with a 50-70watt power supply, some of which can run right off 12v.

Looking at the fold-out designs for LCDs it looks like a fold-up mount would hit and block the air controls. Folding down would be too close to the shifter. I'm convinced I could live without the cup holders and just fill in that area like a few other people have done.

As far as the computer itself. I figured either behind the passenger under the rear deck, but then you can't really access it. Or get a nice looking case and mount it behind the passenger seat, maybe with an option to quickly remove it. And if you get a wireless NIC that supports an external antenna, you can mount the antenna on the roof for better reception.

 

[Getshocked.ca]

I found this Power Supply that runs off of 12 volts

http://www.orbitmicro.com/products/powe ... DX250H.htm

I decided to go with the 2800 64 bit because it runs really cool (temp wise) which will be better for summer computing, Also it is not as power hungry as p4's

I want a system powerfull enough to run DVD's smoothly and GPS without a sweat, Also I figure who knows what I am going to want to add in the future

 

[Foxpaw]

Hrm. Seems a bit excessive. The most demanding software it sounds like you'll be running is the operating system. System requirements for playing DVDs and GPS is virtually irrelevant - even old Commodore 64s can be made to have smooth DVD playback.

If it was me, I'd get a $200 800MHz system, which is still more than you'd need. If you're looking for a place to put it, you might consider putting it in the space intended for the GPS computer. GPS isn't an option on export models (to my knowledge) but the little hollow where the computer goes is still there.

 

[Getshocked.ca]

Where is this gps place??? ( i never knew about it)

I know it is excessive, but I dont mind

here is my stereo system at http://www.getshocked.ca 1300+ watts, thats excessive too

 

[Chris]

Yeah just what are you planning on doing with all that stuff in your car anyways? Unless you plan on turning your car into something that looks like this:

 

[Aaron Cake]

I've been putting computers in cars for years. My first was my MP3 player in my RX-7, which I think was 1998 0r 1999. Can be found on my website at http://www.aaroncake.net/projects/mp3player.htm

I'm currently running this old machine in my Insight since the RX-7 is off the road for a few modifications (for the last 2 years ), but my plan is to build a new system for the Insight.

I don't have any specifics, but the general plan is to use a 1.8 GHz+ MB and CPU, probably mini-ATX or ITX, with a 7-12" touch screen mounted near the glove box facing the driver. I have some small keyboards which will mount perfectly in front of the cup holders and flip out of the way on the rare occasions when I actually use the holders. I also have the elements of the laptop "pointing nipple" which I intend to add to the top of the shift knob. Power will be via a DC-DC converter, perhaps the Opus unit or a custom 144V unit.

No idea when I'll actually get this done, as I've been saying "this year" for two years now. And I would prefer to get the RX-7 done before the end of time...

Regardless, you should check out http://www.mp3car.com . Lots of info.

 

[Delta Flyer]

Does this come with official Starfleet insignias and sound effects? I want it!

On a more serious note, I'd love to have some macro-programmed buttons.

 

[Guest]

http://www.openbrick.org/

 

[Chris]

Delta Flyer, yes you can programe all the buttons to do something if you want to. But most of the lights and buttons are just for looks. It even has a VRC mounted in the top of the roof by the drivers side and has a console on the roof too. There are 3 different models of the K.I.T.T. car from Knight Rider the Series. It must really be embarassing to drive the K.I.T.T. car around, although I like the interior the most.

 

[james]

Ya know, some people have entirely too much time on their hands

I really do have to question the - what's the word I want? - sensibility, maybe. What's the use of a GPS in a car that's constrained to follow the roads, anyway? And DVD? I mean if you thought people trying to drive while talking on their cell phones are a hazard, what do you have to say about people watching movies? As for MP3, why not just get a CD player?

But if you're set on it, I'd suggest going for a used laptop, something like a midrange P3 (or AMD equivalent).

Pardon me if I get a bit off-topic, but what you may not realize is just how little of the processing power of your high-end P4 systems actually gets used. With most apps, and especially multimedia stuff, you're actually limited by how fast the system can access memory (something over 100 clocks for main memory, a bit less for cache), or worse, read from disk or CD.

High clock rates just waste power. Heat increases exponentially with clock speed - the current generation of P4 chips generates about the same heat per unit area as a steam iron.

I work with some of the fastest supercomputers there are. You may have seen a news clip last week about the IBM BlueGene system setting a new speed record - guess what speed its processors run at? Just 700 MHz.

 

[Foxpaw]

Hrmm, well, high clock speeds are useful for some applications - if your program runs in a loop and all of the code and data for the loop fits in your level 1 cache, for instance. So, a high clock speed can show through in an application involved heavy decompression or decryption, and in some cases things like 3D rendering can greatly benefit. A RISC architecture would benefit more than an x86 CISC chip though.

However, since his intention is not heavy decompression or decryption that would make heavy use of cache, instead primarily streaming data from more-or-less permanent storage, I have to agree.

Though the BlueGene isn't really a fair example, since it's 700MHz... with 8,000 processors in parallel.

EDIT: Err, apparently the 8000 processor block isn't the record breaking one. Make that 16,250 processors.

 

[Getshocked.ca]

Ok you are right and wrong

Amd 3200 (2.0ghz) is the equivalent to a P4 3.2 (3.2ghz) The reason being is that AMD and Intel use different methods to acheive a certain level of performance... P4's require higher clock with fewer instructions yet AMD requires lower clock with more instructions. So your super computer at 700mhz does a heck of alot morw instructions then a p4 or AMD

Also you are dead wrong about Ghz not meaning anything, if you would like to continue this offline i will show you as many of my benchmarks as you want to show you how higher clocks = faster computing (my p4 2.8e is at 3.5ghz) also, when I am video editing, at 3.5 ghz I CONSTANTLY use 100% of processor power, so dont tell me it is not used. ohh and one last thing, p4's are 200mhz quad pumped giving 800mhz effective interaction with mermory


Now back onto topic

The Insight is not built for off roading, So yes, A GPS system which only works on roads will be fine for me

As I said in an earlier post, I want to do this just for the heck of it, as a project, and im looking for SUGESTIONS, not thread crapping on why its a good or bad idea

Can anybody add some constructive ideas to this thread?

 

[james]

Well, I thought I did give a constructive idea, which was to get a used notebook for your on-board computer, since the components will (one hopes) be somewhat optimized for shock, space, low power, etc. Though sometimes the most constructive suggestion is one that suggests not to do it

However, something you could do with an on-board computer that could be useful is to add cameras and image processing. One looking ahead could use it to give a view of things beyond headlight range, a couple looking back could replace rearview mirrors, and cut nighttime headlight glare.

As for the GHz question, I'm curious about how you're determining that you're using 100% of processor. I'm not saying it can't be done, for some few applications where many ops are done on operands residing in register, but even an 800 MHz (effective) bus won't keep up in most situations.

If you're getting the number from a typical system performance monitor, realize that it's measuring at a much higher granularity, system task swapping. So if a task is running for its time slice, it's recorded as using the processor, even if most of its running time is the processor waiting on register/cache misses. To measure that, you need something like Intel's Vtune, that accesses the chip's performance counter registers.

One more thing: the BlueGene is not doing a lot more in its clock cycles. The individual processors are in fact fairly standard PowerPC CPUs.

 

[Guest]

Hi All:

___I have been using the following data for years: Processor Electrical Specs …

___To go along with that, I use an under-clocked 1.4 GHz Celeron at 933 MHz (66 MHz FSB) on an Asus TUSL2. Look that one up in the electrical specs sometime in case you are interested in saving energy. I don’t do that much video editing and she runs fine for everything else I have done. Besides the fact that she was a bargain when I built her 2 years ago

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___[email:kqp4gejo][email protected][/email:kqp4gejo]

 

[Chris]

I work with some of the fastest supercomputers there are.

Wow really, so what are they like? I have never used or let alone seen a Super Computer in person, would like to though. LOL I found this one while searching on the internet for my web design 2 project last night, wow and it actually comes with seats too...................Just kiding. This was the only nice one that I could find, well at leat in my opinion.

 

[james]

That's an old Cray, from maybe 10 years ago. Neat design, I agree.

The BlueGene, or at least the small 1024-cpu on that I've actually, physically seen, is not much to look at. Basically a standard rack, about 2x3 ft square by 6 high, with a LOT of cables coming out the back to interconnect all the boards. Noisy, too: all the cooling air fans are not quite like standing on the ramp with an idling F16, but close.