Miata computer cooling
 

Well, my desktop oc cooling project has been put on hold for a little while cause I just bought a Mazda Miata and have decided to add a computer to the car to run mp3's and divx off of. I was thinking of putting the computer with a 10" lcd display in the glove box. My three biggest problems are: will it fit? will it overheat? and will the vibrations kill the hdd?
I came to this forum for hopefull answers and suggestions on what kind of mobo/proc to use to keep it from overheating. I don't imagine that the glove box gets very good air circulation, and I know that the miatas can get very hot in the summer. I don't need extreem speeds, as I don't intend to do any gaming with this, just enough to run win2k or linux/bsd (havn't decided) and play music and movies. I'd prefer onboard video sound and nic so as to keep the computer thin without any pci cards.
Other places I was thinking of putting the computer were in the center console(not sure if it would fit) or in the door(again not sure if it'd fit)

If I can find time tonight, I think I'm gonna try to take apart my console and dash and see how much room I have to work with.

Nice. Green or Red?

It'd be quite a hack job. It'd try to keep the interior's function, and leave the glovebox alone: you'll need it.

Your best bet is to slip it under the dash.

Fans are essential. It can get quite hot in the summer here in Houston (up to 40 deg C), but the plus is that there's always enough sun to power a solar cell ;)

As for mounting the HDD, Panasonic uses gel paks in their rough line of laptops, which have a magnesium allow case. These things are actually designed to be dropped from a height of three feet (!)

In this case, I think I'd go with a rubber band suspension, at the very least.

I just heard about a MP3 player with a actual hard drive for a car. They are selling them at the local car audio shop. Not sure what kind of drive it is though. Might be a idea to stash it in the trunk and run long wires (wouldn't be to long as that is a short car). I don't see to many mobo's that your going to get under the dash of one of them things, let alone it being in somekind of housing. Intersting ides. I seen some pics of some ultra small mobo's before. I can't remember the brand though. ECS makes that Duron XP 1200 BS that is a Duron 850@890. The CPU is soldered on and I belive it has all the onboard BS, but if you want decent sound your not going to want onboard audio. I tried pluging in the output of a Sound card into a car audio amp once and it was not a good thing. You might want to play with that first before you decide to actually start hacking stuff up.

Red, of course.. ^_^ although I might get a new paint job one of these days, so I'm not sure what color I'll go to. Maybe silver.

Last night I took apart my dash, glove box, console, and just about everything else that I could take apart in an evening. There not much space in the console, or behind the current cd player. There is quite a bit of room(relatively) behind the glove box, though. I think I could fit a motherboard back there(without any cards, for sure, not sure if I could fit it with a sound card). It wouldn't have much of an enclosure, just some padding to keep it from shorting out on stuff. I was also hoping to allow the hdd to be removeable, which makes rubber bands kind of tricky to work with, but not impossible, I'll look into that gel pack thing, that might be the best way to go.

You are probably thinking of the SSI Neo 35, Jaydee. Top item shown here: http://www.mp3car.com/hardwarecats.asp?Type=C
It's a removeable hdd bay that has a little lcd display and buttons so you can play mp3s off of the hdd. I don't particularly care for the interface. plus the cost seems a little steep, at $350(not including hdd) I could get a mobo w onboard vid, proc, 10" lcd, snd crd, have money to spare, and be able to que stuff up in winamp, use one of those many driving direction/map programs, watch divx, get wireless internet,... etc.. What kind of sound card did you hook up to your car? Are there any mobos with good onboard sound?

I was thinking of using this display, removing the case, and mounting it so it drops down with the glove box door.

Yes, that is the one. Wasn;t suggesting you buy it instead, just pointing out there is hard drives capable of working in cars.

If I were you I would first start with testing the car audio system with the computer audio system. I tried it once before and it didn't work very well. Something to look into before you try and put it in the car and find out it sounds real bad. That was several years ago though, modern sound cards maybe a lot better.

If you are worried about not putting any expansion cards on, then you can't use that monitor most probably. You have to use the included video card i.e. 2mb. Usually that is not enough to play DivX movies either... yet another nice problem for you. As you can see that 80 dollars is nice untill you notice all of its drawbacks.:confused:

yea, whoops, I just noticed that too. hmm.. crap.. I found a 4" lcd for $100 somewhere, maybe I'll go with that and mount it in my console somewhere. Anyone know of any other sources for cheap lcd displays? 4" - 10"?

That monitor gets it's power from the video card. Do you think that the video signal is any different? or just a couple of extra power wires running through the cable? Could I splice the cable and hook it up to a different video card and seperate power?

I was just browsing through allelectronics and noticed this:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...M-1&type=store

how about 1 of these via eden motherboards
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/default.asp?c=2

they only measure 170mm x 170mm:D

or if your after more power how about this
Commell LV670 Pentium 4 MiniITX

same size as above but P4 power

Allright, I think I might go with the sb Extigy. It's external, so I can fit it into a small spot somewhere, and connects via usb cables. That way I can keep good sounding audio, with low profile mobo with onboard video and no pci cards.

I've been looking around on ebay and it seems like getting eplacement laptop lcd screens are pretty cheap. I'm not sure how getting a regular video output to convert to laptop lcd input works. But, hark! this is the internet! someone must know!

I also found a couple of cheap tablet pc replacements, lcd+touch, anyone know how to wire one of those?

I've seen many places selling for cheap an asus A7N266. It's micro atx and uses the first generation Nforce chipset, including GF2MX graphics and Nvidia sound. It seems more than enough for what you need. You can use any current Athlon XP, even underclock it for less heat, and have a lot more processing power than that VIA crap.

It's an interesting project, only thing that intrigues me is what kind of power supply you need to run it from the car battery?

the "MP3 Mobile"..
 

From digging through my bookmarks, I found this site. I remember looking into doing something with this about 4 years ago, but never got around to messing with it (I moved about 1000 miles away a month or two after looking this up, and so never got to try any of it out.).

MP3 Mobile - HOWTO

Now, since this article's a few years old (5?), I'm sure there's a whole lot more you can do with it, but it's a starting place.

daBum

prety sure thats for the psone

Yeah, ssys it in the description.

it seems like there's a lot of wasted space there that I don't need. I don't really need the speakers, since I would be pumping this through my sterio. I think(read: hope) I can find something a little larger that has less wasted space around the edge of the lcd.

Allright... someone tell me what the downside that I'm missing with this is: http://www.earthlcd.com/TC-10.htm
it seems to contain a 10" touch lcd display, a 300 mhz proc, mobo, all the other goodies that a computer needs, and for $300.
Now, granted the computer is slow, but it would be a good starting place to get audio working in my car, then I could upgrade the mobo and proc when I decide to get movies going. plus, this is thin enough, I might be able to fit it in my glove box and keep some of the storage capacity.

As far as power supply, I found this site that lists some dc-dc power supplys designed specifically for cars. They don't list a price, but it at least means that someone makes them: http://www.mp3car.com/hardwarecats.asp?Type=H&Cat=P