Thread: Hello...

Hi,

Thought I would introduce myself and give you an idea of what I am about to attempt......

About 6mnths ago one of my mates suggested sticking a PC into my car and I laughed so much my sides hurt - little did I know this was already going on Roll forward six months and I have been trying to sort out a new vehicle and you know how it is, google, search and then go off at different tangets and before you know it you are thinking about installing a pc into your own vehicle.....

I soon hope to be with my new wheels - a late model VW Transporter T4 2.5tdi Van. Want to turn it into a mobile comms van Due to the size of the van I have plenty of space - will have 2 or 3 110a 12v Leisure batteries in the vehicle on a split charger and also option for mains charging all connected to a Zig 12v unit (fuse box, relay etc).

I have a Dell 8200 Inspirion laying around at home spare and this will be my PC for the van - going to connect this to a C/Dock II latitude docking station. Flash the bios to recognise the wrong type docking station and this will then give me the option of adding 2 x PCI slots to my laptop!, as the docking station has pci expansions slots in the base. One for a sound card and the other for a Hapuage Freeview card. This will give me decent sound and freeview digital tv on my InCarPc.

Sit the laptop near the drivers seat in a custom box and I will have it powerd of a Pure Sine based inverter and connect the sound output to my Pioneer head unit. Use existing PCCMCIA slot with my Orinoco card for wireless and connect TV aerial to the Happuage card. USB Dvd player to be fed onto the dash below the pioneer head unit and below the motorized Vga touchscreen.

As for autostart & shutdown - i'll deal with this once I have everything installed and up and running.

This is the plan anyway! As soon as I have the wheels the project will start as I already have the above mentioned bits will keep posting to advise how I get on.

Regards

Toby