What hardware / distro are you using ?

With the idea to help new users, maybe it could be usefull for them to have some feedback around distro and hardware (motherboards, displays, input etc) to chose or avoid and of course in case you recommand to avoid, explain why, which were the encoutered difficulties and how you did to workaround the trouble.

My config

hardware : VIA Epia M10000, 256 Mb, 40 GB Disk, touch screen e-galax, Navilock gps receiver, Navigator 4, 4 x 200W Blaupunkt amplifier, Motorola Razr V3 for it's gprs modem and bluetooth services, Home made fast 10 channels A/D converter card, Home made 16 channels A/D I/O card, cambridge bluetooth usb adapter.

software : Distro LFS mainly based on kernel vanilia 2.6, portions of Mandrake 10, portions of FC4, Xorg, some portions of Xfree86, Windowmaker and home made front end.

Hardware:

• Advantech PCM-9373-M0A1 3.5" half-sbx mainboard
• Advantech PCM-232-00A1 TV out card
• Noritake NTK3900 256x128 VFD Panel (I think it is the 256x128C)
• Diamond Systems Jupiter-MM 50 Watt PC/104 DC-DC PSU
• 100 GB Seagate 2.5" 5400RPM
• 256 MB SODIMM
• Grayhill 62A11 Optical Rotary Encoder
• Grayhill 60A 4-way rotary joystick
• 10 Pushbuttons (about to be replaced by touch sensoring electrodes)
• About one breadboard worth of custom electronics to handle input
• MTX 275Watt Thunder Amp
• 12" MTX Subwoofer
• 6" Kenwood components in the front
• 6" Kenwood 3-ways in the back
• 2x 100x2 amps for the normal speakers

Software:

• Gentoo Linux with latest stable Gentoo-patched kernel
• ifplugd to handle network ups/downs
• LTK - Custom graphical user interface toolkit
• LlamaBox - Custom Media Player / Library

My hardware is different than most people on mp3 car. My system actually fits inside the dash and the whole unit is removable. There is no head unit, the player is the head unit. There is no touchscreen. I prefer a VFD due to it's readability and I prefer hardware controls because they are tactile. I had to make a custom board to control the input and feed it to the ps/2 port. There will be another input board soon to control the video-game controller ports. (the system is also an emulator box for the home). It will support original NES/SNES/Genesis controllers.

The software is a trimmed version of Gentoo-Linux. I do not run X nor do I run any window manager. My toolkit, LTK, draws to the VFD (via a custom kernel module), and in the future, the TV-Screen (via SDL).

I guess we are the only ones using Linux... I'm surprised intuition hasn't posted his specs.

lol maybe others are using top secret devices :eek: :)

WMDs

I'm running LFS with DirectFB and SDL for my (soon to be made) custom front end. I've got a little script I run when the computer starts to connect my Linksys WLAN card to my home network using the rt2500 WLAN driver from serial monkey. My system is in a custom case and the hardware setup can be found here: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...t=jeep+liberty This page is a little out date as much of the plan and some of the hardware has changed. I'll post more info about my setup when I get some time; it's a little late right now.

Here's my config:

http://moose.ca/node/49

Things I'd change and/or research a little more before committing cycles if I had to start over:

- Ditch EPIA. There are lots of small, similar mobos out there with much more CPU power (P4), features and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, more/better support.

- Get serious about looking into a Mini Mac running either OSX (booting to X Windows, not Aqua) OR running Linux on PPC. Running OSX makes someone else manage your patching via Software Update versus emerge or similar.

- get a sound device that works with ALSA out of the box. Audigy 2 NX is supported now but before it was I spent a lot of time hacking it. I could fill an entire book with ALSA rants...

This all being said, I'm reasonably happy with how my project is progressing. I'm at the foo-foo graphics polishing stage and integration with automagically generated playlists for gqmpeg when an iPod or CF card is placed in a USB slot.

Thanks for your contribution :)

O.T : i've been looking at your project, finally it seems that linux with your project is one more step to it's rising phase :cool: cool logo too ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheLlama

I guess we are the only ones using Linux... I'm surprised intuition hasn't posted his specs.

---

I've been busy with getting my studio set back up so I haven't been monitoring the board as much. Anyhoo, here's the specs for my system:

Hardware:

• VIA MII-12000 MB (1.2 GHz VIA C3)
• 160 GB 7200 RPM HD
• 512 MB CF Card
• 512 MB RAM
• ATI Radeon 7000PCI
• Hauppage PVR250 PVR card w/TV tuner and 2 video inputs
• K74 Parallel port 8-relay controller
• M1-ATX 90W power supply
• Edimax 7108PCg PCMCIA WiFi card
• Video sync combiner circuit (built by me)
• Casetronic C137 case
• X10 Lola RF remote control
• OEM display (navigation display already in my dash)
• USB Hub (hidden under rear seat)

Software:

• Gentoo linux, kernel 2.6.13-4 (vanilla)
• swsusp2 patches
• Silverwolf (frontend)
• Xine (DVDs on HD, Console DVD, Aux video, TV Tuner)
• vidix video drivers for xine
• MPG123 (MP3 playback)
• vsftpd (ftp access)
• sshd (secure shell access)
• iwlist (from iwutils - part of the WiFi management)
• Festival (voice feedback)
• arts (sound daemon)
• X-Windows
• KDE as window manager but eventually I'll probably change that eventually

Status:
Everything installed, everything works (for over a year now)

What I want to change/add:

• Touchscreen support
• Write my own FFT routines for the spectrum analyzer thus removing reliance on aRts and KDE
• CD/DVD burner in the glove box

I run gentoo as well. not for my Car computer but for several office machines.