A word from a newbie + a performance question

**tomee** · 06-14-2006, 12:27 PM

Hi,

this is my first post here as I am new to the whole thing and don't have my Car PC complete yet.

I always liked uncommon mods, and this is one since I drive a Fiat Punto II, not exactly a road demon one would expect to have multimedia onboard.

Nevertheless, being a poor Polish student I acquired:
- a generic 8" 800x600 touchscreen display
- a generic Philips SAA7134 TV/FM tuner
- a morex 60w dc-dc stabilized power unit
- a 80G 3.5" hard drive
- a DVD-ROM in a slim case
- an USB-IDE converter
- a Bluetooth dongle
- a mobile phone that will serve as a GPRS over BT modem
- and lately a Via EPIA with Eden 533MHz processor

This is where my question is -- what MoBos and processors do you guys use, which provide decent performance in Centrafuse or RoadRunner and DVD playback? My setup is good enough to browse the web, listen to mp3s, even watch divx movies, but somehow the performance in the integrated front-ends is unacceptable, especially in RR.
So, when I get some cash, what to buy?

More thoughts:
- the SAA7134 pulled out of my desktop doesn't work. It's even detected by Windows as some device, but I lack drivers. Also, the CD-in header seems to be smaller than the plug on the cable that I have. Are there multiple standards?
- I read that most cards don't support auto scanning (which ones do?) and have poor reception quality. This put me off as I wanted to replace my radio-cd player entirely...
- I chose Windows because there's no support for turn-by-turn navigation in Linux, which sucks ;(
- Winamp is a little bit hard to operate on touchscreen and Windows Media Player sucks just because it does. Any other suggestions?
- I still need to buy an amplifier or a radio with aux input.
- and I need to assemble all this stuff together
- other than being too slow (but maybe without debugging symbols it will be faster) I really liked Centrafuse for its sleek, intelligent design. I have programming experience myself, so who knows, maybe I'll contribute

That would be all.

**Puffanug** · 06-14-2006, 12:33 PM

I use a Aopen Pandora with a 1.5Ghz Celeron-M and 512MB. It runs DVD and music and all that fine for me. I have not tried any of the new flash based skins, but I have read that they run ok on similar setups. As for Winamp being lame on a touchscreen, that is what the frontends are for. They use winamp (some of them) and it runs in the background. All you see is the skin, not any of the Winamp screens.

Looks like you got a good start going there, keep at it...

**MatrixPC** · 06-14-2006, 12:41 PM

If you want to contribute, take a look at RoadRunner. It's an open source project where as CentraFuse is a commercial application.

If you unsatified with RoadRunner performance, foget about CentraFuse.

- HQCT is a new kid on the block AM/FM tuner design for our hobby. I don't have one and not intended to buy one yet cuz I am happy with the car HU and want to keep it.

**tomee** · 06-14-2006, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by MatrixPC

If you want to contribute, take a look at RoadRunner. It's an open source project where as CentraFuse is a commercial application.

Yes, but RoadRunner seems to be a quite mature application and still has those annoying glitches like the OSK not working in browser mode, embedding the whole browser instead of the sole HTML component, and this horrible red bubble when I press the screen - what's that supposed to do and how do I get rid of it?

Originally Posted by MatrixPC

If you unsatified with RoadRunner performance, foget about CentraFuse.

Well, maybe you're right, but Centrafuse seemed like it had a more responsive and polished interface.

Originally Posted by MatrixPC

- HQCT is a new kid on the block AM/FM tuner design for our hobby. I don't have one and not intended to buy one yet cuz I am happy with the car HU and want to keep it.

Thanks, I'll see what's in the archive.