Thread: Cheapest car pc ever.

The other day my wife and I were out at the mall.
It was a week before we were due to go to virginia on vacation.

Anyways the cellphone rang it was my friend Ryan who had just moved to Chesapeake bay MD.
So he says "come over and see me" hey, there goes chincoteague island, same sorta place only free.

So we decided to buy a TV set, 52" projection HDTV.

Anyways this is leading somewhere I promise lmao.gif

On the way out of the store I noticed an MSNTV2 sitting there, open box item for $20.

I grabbed it just for craps n giggles and returned home.

As I suspected you need to pay for a service, even though you may have broadband (like me).

I looked on the net and it seems you can hack the MSNTV2, replace the bios and its boot OS and put linux on it.

Now inside it has a compact flash card, 64mb.. the hack is very easy, basically you need a special serial cable, you flash the bios after pinning this into the motherboard (very easy to do) and then flash the bios, then you put some linux files on the flashcard and let it boot, and then stop the boot replacing some command text stuff.

Its moderately hard to do by the look of it but seems very possible... I have ordered a cable and some stuff and will be putting linux on soon.

Now, this does then require a USB hard drive, but I have a spare 1gb laptop drive laying about and gonna order a USB2IDE adaptor and put the drive in the MSNTV2 (whilst small itll easily take a drive) then mod the back and run the usb loop into the MSNTV2.

My point is this, the MSNTV2 has an ITX mobo in it with the TV out built in, a 733 celeron, 128mb ram, network cable and pretty much everything you need onboard, and, they can be had on ebay for less than $5 LMAO.

They also come with a wireless keyboard AND a TV remote.
Theyre small and sleek (would EASILY fit under the seat of a car) and once linux is on you have a car pc a la mode for less than a total outlay of $40.

An ITX motherboard ALONE is over $180.

Sound good? watch this space.. Mine isnt going in my car (yet) but Ill keep you all posted and updated, Im also going to mod tons of LEDS into it and repaint the shell kameleon.

BTW I have the (at the moment unobtainable) WIKI on *exactly* how to do this along with all the files, some of them very naughty.

The WIKI has a fully documented proceedure on how this is done with photos to match.

I am not going to host them, but if you would like them please let me know VIA PM stating your email address and I will fire them over to you, trust me, it's no more than an hour's work to have a stunningly tidy and pretty car PC ready to be inverted and plugged into your car.

I will do the pms at once, so there will be no timescale preference.

Andy