Thread: Complete bolt in Screen/CPU/HD/PS - indash

I'd be interested in one as well. Casing is pretty much the last thing on my to do list. That and a IDE-to-CF. Still deciding if I want to do it.

The embedded OS is the best solution for the rock solid stability in the car. Media and such is fine on a physical drive but when the OS is seeking files from a platter and you hit a pothole its not pretty. Flash hardware is much more shock resistant plus an XPE build can be made very small and robust depending on what you are going to do with it. Mine is for the most part and entertainment and GPS console so the OS is quite small, things like networking, printing, drivers and many more unnecessary modules have been removed in favor of a speedy kernel and a stable system. Only the exact drivers for my hardware are present. I even went through all the folders and removed the .txt log files form the install before deployment. My total OS is under 200 mb installed.


I have my carPC pulled from the mustang right now as I am upgrading a couple parts and removing the wooden dowels in favor of .063 aluminum shelfs and standoffs on all hardware. I may even swap my original prototype chassis out for a new production model. The prototype has A LOT of holes in the sides from different hardware configurations I took a couple pics of mine vs. gregs to show what a couple years of progress yields. Mine is the chassis with only the motherboard mounted and gregs is the one with the LCD controller, TS controller mounted. Im also considering a laptop drive so I can fit everything inside. Time will tell

Hump I will PM you back shortly about your request

Nice photograph of the xenarc (Hitachi) LCD clarity

Well, I've decided to go with RR instead of centrafuse which was my main reason for not going with the CF embedded solution. Now I have to go read up on RR and HORM. Yay.
I figure now is as good as any time to drop this picture of my current model. It's very much based on blk02si 's model, but I just added the ford factory mounting tabs. In it is he mobo, DSATX mounted to the top, HOLUX in the middle, and the Hawking wifi tucked behind the siding (you can't see it).

FYI: Stand-offs take up a lot of your precious height.

Originally Posted by epod86

Well, I've decided to go with RR instead of centrafuse which was my main reason for not going with the CF embedded solution.

CF = Compact Flash

Its a flash memory module I run the OS on. I fun XP embedded OS from compact flash and also run RR on the flash. The frontends have nothing to do with the flash module hardware.

I HATE centrafuse frontend (or any closed source app) and its never seen my carPC



Very nice drawing, I like the mounting provisions. How are you going tp mount the LCD?

Whoops, messed up that brain to text translation there. One of the reasons that I didn't want to go with the compact flash was that CentraFuse doesn't have good EWF support. But with further research, I don't think RR does either. Seems like installing RR to second, writable partition is a better idea and running the OS and RR only off of the protected drive and moving the RR.ini file to the writable part to get resume features. Does that make any sense? Anyway, LSX Void has grown on me. The reason I preferred Centrafuse was it handles the music library better. I went through and fixed all my mp3 ID3 tags (like 6 hours of work there) and so now RR works a whole lot better.

Not quite sure about the screen. It's an 8" that won't go in a double din unit. I have a spare pony face plate, and so I'm going to see how to go about integrate it. I'd like to bolt the lcd and a little bit of it's housing to the casing, so that it's more 'drop in.' Either that or just do a molding job, but that would make take-down more difficult. Need to take it apart and see what the lcd boards look like. Might go under the little shelf nicely.

I actually have 2 extra 7" LCD (screens only) that both work and no controller for them so I can sell you one if you want.

Epod you should try RR with my skin, its the only frontend/skin combo with native EWF support. My batch files could be adapted to other software platforms but it will give you control over an EWF drive with a button driven interface instead of the command line.

Thanks blk. I did give your skin a try earlier in the week. Sorry, but the back button wasn't quite what I was looking for. I'd like one that doesn't behave like a browser back with a 'history list' and instead one that functions in the logical order of the menus. I guess I could look into coding things to work this way, but unfortunately I have bigger fish to fry. My DSATX's brain stem is behaving badly. I haven't even looked into EWF yet, and gave up on minlogon cuz my motherboard has the dreaded ACPI problems when minlogon is used. Sigh, don't you love debuging .

PS: any chances on a case? Just ordered an addonics CF-IDE, So case is the only thing holding me back. I could hack up the old radio casing but the solder screws are a b***h.