Thread: Anyone here us an XBOX as the carputer

Originally Posted by guitar333

97 LT Blazer - Xbox install

That isn't really a carputer. I meant modded the XBOX with a new hard drive, runing a different OS, as well as a mod chip so you can play burned games and have a lot of XBOX games on the HD but obviously it's modded so it can be used as a regular computer as well.

Originally Posted by tbdombrosky

I have been considering it. The boot time can get pretty low if you use cromwell as the bios and boot from the hard drive. The main thing I'm worried about is sound. I wouldn't use the onboard sound card. I would want to use a usb based solution and I'm not sure how well linux supports them (especially the m-audio based ones). But, it is a really cheap solution and should work pretty well. I'm also concerned about how well cromwell works with a vga monitor.

Tom

Well, if you were going to be using an xbox already, why not make it easy on yourself and use one of the xbox lcds, the "mobile monitor"s.

If you did want to use vga, there are converters for the xbox, like this

I'm trying to go the other way and see if I can use one of these lcds for my epia.

I really considered it, but I want good GPS software and I can't get any of them to work under wine.

Hmm. I'm sure this can be done. The Xbox is a computer plain and simple, you just need to modify a bit. There are a ton of tutorials on how to hack your Xbox and add things like RCA audio outputs, usb cables, modchips, ect. There also very cheap (compaired to other computers)

For sound I found this accessory to help with the audio problem:
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/209498.asp

Monster cable also makes a good cable. Does anyone have a link to the Xbox monitor? I'd like to see if its modible. Are there any other aspects of a car pc we've overlooked for this mod? You can load up Linux and I think you can get GPS to work (it would take some tweaking though). Throw a mod chip in and anything is possible. Can anyone think of a way to hook this up to a wifi antenna to connect to wireless nodes?

Bump. I am highly considering trying this out. Putting USB in this thing isn't too hard (http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/two-usb.php and http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/usb-cable.php are two tutorials I found) and I think the Xbox Linux project (http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/) has come very far in the past few months. Setting up GPS shouldn't be too hard. I would like to try and find a wireless USB adaptor with an antenna out though so I can get on the wireless internet. I also found this (http://www.x2vga.com/) handy device for hooking up RCA audio and a VGA out. Now I just need to find a cheap Xbox and see if it will fit in my car . Can anyone add products they've found that would work?