Thread: PW-60 ... regulation?

Okay, I bought a PW-60 to run my EPIA-5000 board in the car. I use an Optibase MPEG2 decoder PCI card. System reboots and otherwise is unstable.

Much reading shows me that maybe I was misled by the people selling it. They indicated it would run the older slower boards (like I have) with no problems in a car, and as long as the DC voltages weren't way out of wack, it would power 1 3.5" drive. Planned accessories is pretty much limited to two wireless modules via USB.

So now I'm seeing I need to regulate the DC voltage before it hits the PW-60.

I think 7812's (or 7912's, the +12 version) require too much power inbound to work. What are people using?

I plan to jumper the power jumper on the system board, and tie the thing to the ignition lead. Either that, or make a circuit that powers the computer up the first time the remote line from the stereo goes active, but doesn't collapse until the car is turned off.

I've toyed with the idea of just leaving the computer running all of the time. Anyone do this? Maybe add a cap for starting the car?

I'm also getting a ton of noise (interference from the hard drive of all things) on the console RCA output. The 2nd RCA + stereo outputs from the Optibase card work fine. I have a LCD up front that has two composite inputs, one tied to the console output. Then the 2nd output from that LCD + the two headrest LCDs are hooked to a mobile video amp, hooked to a Sony XT-40V TV module, which is hooked to the computer (plus stereo).