Computer in a Cadillac, I'm Back ;)

Ritalin Kid · August 25th, 2002, 06:11 PM

If most of you have been wondering where I have been well I've been hard at work on the Computer in a Cadillac idea I posted many many months ago.

The first time I actually have a ECS K7SEM running off of a 200watt AC-DC MiniATX PSU inside of a attche' case.. BUT that wasn't small enough plus the fact that I also had to buy an inverter to plug my computer up which pulled 300+ watts from my car and the case was still to big in my opinion.

So, the past month I've been tracking down the smallest parts available and have come up with a much better cadillac computer. right now the box is made of plexiglass and measures in at 8x10x3.5 inches it has a FV24 FlexATX motherboard with a Celeron 700MHz CPU, 256 megs of SDRAM, one 20 Gig Toshiba 2.5 notebook hard drive w/IDE adapter compliments of CompGeeks.com, and a 70watt DC-DC PSU (compliments of Jeff Mucha of Skylabs.org) so no more inverter just plug it straight up to the car battery, not to mention a 7.6 inch Xenarc touchscreen LCD, LG DVD/CDRW, and of course a standard floppy.

I don't have my camera available at this time due to the fact that I'm still in the slow process of moving but I promise to have pics up within the next couple of days.

maface · August 25th, 2002, 06:30 PM

Sounds cool!! As soon as you can get some pics posted

Brainchild · August 25th, 2002, 07:30 PM

I was waiting for the pics too RitalinKid, I think it's a great idea, can't wait to see it in action, well see it anyway

Tomteriffic · August 25th, 2002, 07:53 PM

This is getting cool! Some pretty resourceful parts hunting on your part, Rit. I saw some itty-bitty e-machines power supplies at a computer show today and thought about this project.

Waiting on pix

Marc04 · August 25th, 2002, 08:15 PM

Sounds cool. I was just talking to my wife about computers in cars and then I see this post. I'd be interested too, also to find out where to get the small displays and cost. I was wondering if the Via C3 processor would be the best for this type of project. Aren't they supposed to be the lowest power consumption and run so cool that they'll run without a heatsink?

I can't wait to see pics and all the specs.

Marc

Ritalin Kid · August 26th, 2002, 03:35 AM

I finally completed the little black box.. everything is ready except a few mods to XP that I want to do.

At the moment I've tested everything but the DC-DC PSU..

As far as using the Via C3 CPU.. I did consider that BUT I needed something good enough for DVD software playback and from what I've heard the C3 tends to drop alot of frames when decoding.

I'll post the rest tommorrow I promise.

ClubMed · August 26th, 2002, 06:40 AM

Sounds like a great idea, I did have a link in my favourites to some really great pc/car mods, some of the ideas were just amazing.

I too am eager to see the pics, so hurry up RK!

CM.

Knothead · August 26th, 2002, 02:21 PM

Heh, I keep checking back to this thread to see if RK has pictures up yet....I'll bet others are doing the same!

Can't WAIT to see!!

LJE2 · August 26th, 2002, 06:42 PM

If your lookin for ideas or tips on puttin a pc in you car here's a couple of links, on the VIA page there's an article on how to power your pc using a cars 12 v power.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/projects.jsp
hers's a link to the mini ITX motherboard
http://www.mini-itx.com/#story0060

ocit · August 26th, 2002, 07:07 PM

What vid card do you got in your caddy ? or is it "intergrated"?