Thread: Questions about HP laptops

you say you have been reading here for years but you seem to have missed a hell of a lot of information.
Your laptop isnt going to handle DVD or even video very well its just too slow. GPS probably but your going to have to get some ram in there.
Start up shutdown on a laptop, an opus or any power supply the same as that just isnt going to work as they are ATX power supplies. The battery idea will work but your going to have to open the case up and solder connections onto the power switch of the laptop. You will then either have to use a manual switch or build a circuit to pulse on these connection. Have a search there is a circuit in here somewhere to do it. Alternatively you can make a fake UPS again search for the circuit. Old laptops might be the cheap solution but they are far from the best and for your furst time round will complicate things a lot.

There's so much information, it is overwhelming. I have been looking into (off and on) over the last 5 or so years. Just as a past time to try and figure out how I could integrate something like this in my car. I thought that the laptop would be the best solution for me, but I am starting to rethink this hypothesis. Also, I have forgotten most of the information I read on here. i used to have the schematic on how to build a startup and shutdown controller from scratch, but I misplaced it. I may wait until next summer to tackle this when school lets out (no more grading papers and such). I didn't want to invest in a super expensive system either, so that pretty much rules out those micro atx boards. I had an empeg that had one of those in it, pretty advanced for its time. I may just try and find a good motherboard and mount everything in the trunk where the cd changer was. I don't want to start it until I have a detailed plan, though. Anyways, thanks for the input.

Finding something like an old 1gig pentium or something like that might be a good way for you to go. It wont take too much power but will still be usable for what your wanting to do. Most important for you by the sounds of it is that it will be cheap to do as well. You don't have to spend vast fortunes to get something usable.

Sounds good, will start looking. Hopefully I can use my factory amps and volume attenuator to control the sound. Thanks again.

Here's what I'm going to do: I'll use my computer at home that don't use very often (athlon xp 2000+). It should hopefully be powerful enough. I'm probably going to play with the bios settings to get the most reliable setting that produces the least heat and power consumption. . .ie, reduce the cpu speed (and maybe voltage if possible). I would think this should make it run pretty cool together with my fan it has. I used to have some heat problems with it so I installed a cooler master 15000 rpm fan with heat pipe technology and its now pretty stable. Hopefully if I reduce the speed it should remain stable in a hot car environment. Would windows xp or windows 2000 be best with this setup? I plan on using a 40 gigabyte maxtor hard drive, but I also have a few other choices. . .80 gig western digital or 80 gig ibm drive. I really want to choose the one that will be most reliable and least susceptible to heat (I live in louisiana and it gets pretty hot from May to September). I'll plan on tweaking my install so that I get the best startup time by removing anything I can think of and a fresh reinstall. I'm going to look into installing windows 2000 on a compact flash or sd card and hopefully make the installation read only. I'll have to research this, though as i've never attempted anything like this. I really like windows 2000 and xp b/c they are a lot more reliable than 98, even though 98 loads a lot faster.

How do I determine the wattage that my system draws?

correction, I believe it is maybe a 7500 rpm fan b/c the bios says it runs around 7600 rpm. Keeps it around 40 degrees celcius.

I use a Dell 700 PIII Laptop and it's fast enough for all I have to do...

I only have 256MB or Ram because that's the maximum that the laptop will take. What I would suggest is put as much ram as you can into the laptop (you can check the maximum limit at http://www.crucial.com).

I would also suggest that you use Windows XP, but use a lite version. Look up Tiny XP and you'll be ok I thyink for GPS DVD and MP3.... I was playing DVDs just fine on my PIII 333MHZ with a 2X DVD drive and a 2MB Video card so, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to do the same with a 450MHz....

Peace,

Rafster

I actually took it apart and it is a 500 mhz. The max it will take is a 256 sodimm. I ordered it already. My main question if the laptops workout (ideal) is if anyone makes a device that can be hard wired onto it to force it to turn on when the car turns on (and not get confused by the on off on off etc that occurs when starting up or whatever else that might occur). In other words, if the computer is running or on, it shouldn't try to cycle the power switch. This is the only thing that keeps me from choosing the laptop. I'd prefer it since it is smaller and uses a lot less power. I used to use an athlon 750 and was very satisfied with the speed of it, so I think the 500mhz p3 should be close to that. I don't think I can do dvd and gps at the same time, but who would want to. as long as it can do at least one thing at a time. Is there a way to hook a normal size hard drive to its ide port? I wouldn't mind sending it off to have it soldered or whatever (I'm not very good at soldering, unsteady hands). Thanks!