I need some pointers on my 99 accord build

**Ix3u** · 09-04-2011, 09:31 PM

So the idea of installing a computer in a car never crossed my mind until like 3 days ago when I ran cross a link to this website. And now that I've been read about it, I'm totally going to do it. Since this is going to be my first build, and I'm going to do my best to use a bunch of crap I have sitting around my house to keep this as cheap as possible. In the meantime, I'm going to build a custom in dash mount for my Iconia tab so I can just run that to my head and access my google music, play playstation and watch movies.

So on to the fun stuff. I as of now, I'm planning on using a free desktop I have sitting around. It's an old pavilion a600n that (if possible) if going to build a custom fiberglass case as well as mount some anti-shock supports in my spare tire area. I'm plenty capable of running all the usb cables and power switch and whatnot. So hear comes number one of 2 questions I have... How can/should I go about powering this thing? Amps and wattage and amperage isn't my strong point so I'm not sure how to go about it. Any advice on this (the more detailed the better) would be sweet. My plan would be to build the setup so that easy upgrades would be possible in the future for when I end up going balls to the wall with this.

And for question number 2... As far as frontends go, what are some good recommendations on this? I've go the computer set up in my living room now with roadrunner on it (remember I'm trying to do this as cheap as possible) and I can't for the life of me (even with reading stuff in the RR area) to get my pluggins working or how to switch the browser from IE to chrome or from media player classic to vlc. If anyone has a tutorial for retards they can point me to I would greatly appreciate it.

Anyways.... Thanks in advance guys.

PS. If anyone's advice requires more info on planned setup just let me know

**Tidder** · 09-07-2011, 12:52 AM

Can't really help you on powering the thing if we don't know the specs of the box.

Frontends are a big pain in the butt... and RR has got to be the most difficult to set up that I've ever used. All I can tell you is search, try, fail, search again, try again...

There was talk once of a manual or a wiki for RR but I haven't seen anything yet. Not to say it doesn't exist somewhere though...

**soundman98** · 09-07-2011, 05:38 PM

what tidder said--kinda. i only use rr, but i also only use it for audio playback(my reason for the carpc is active audio processing) i have very little problems gettign ti setup to my needs for that.. but adding plugin's, or different video players to work is completely above my head...

for powering the rig, i believe the dsatx, or m4 power supplies would work for that, though, my shallow searches are showing very little in terms of power consumption for that board.

either power supply is large enough for most component-processor rigs. i heavily recommend the dsatx over the m4 mostly because i've got one, and the support was really good when mine died a couple months ago..

for power wire, i recommend 8ga wire(those power supplies technically do not need anything larger then 10ga, but i like overkill). i use the walmart amp kits-- something like $20, and includes more then you'll ever need..

**Ix3u** · 09-10-2011, 12:55 AM

Yeah... Everything I've read for RR seems to be pretty vague. Busted my *** trying to edit the settings files and nothing worked. So I moved on to centralized. Definitely easier to customize, but still a pain. Plus it wouldn't initialize some of my emulators, which is a huge turn off.
Since I posted, my "temporary " tab install turned into a more permanent kind of thing.... Considering that the iconia has a real usb port, I can hook up my hard drive with everything on it so I have all of my movies, shows, pictures on it and as of now the only thing that I want it to do that it can't, is the whole odb monitoring.

Eventually I'm going to go with the whole carpc (since I took the sawsall to my dash and there is a TON of space to install whatever I want in there) and run (hopefully) run EVERYTHING through it. Audio, video, windows and all of that.

I'll post some pictures of all the fiberglass work and whatnot when I get a chance.