Shutdown Controller

**SpectraCelica** · 01-31-2005, 06:32 PM

Hello,
I recently purchased a carputer off a friend of my. Here is the spec of it...
5.6" LCD activematrix screen
VIA C3 mainboard with 1GHz CPU
Streets and Trips 2005
GPS
20 GB miniture laptop HD
512 MB DDR

that being said, I got a few question about the power supply for it. Right now it is wired to the ACC power in my car and it runs off 12V power off the car. How come some people need to use DC to DC converter and/or other type of invertor??? I was told I dont need it because 12V car power supply is plenty enough for my system.

Also there is no shutdown controller in my system, therefore I just purchase the "CarPC EZ v2.2 - The Simple ATX Power Controller" off this site. Will this controller be enough to provide the proper shutdown to the system? I want to be able to shut off the car and walk away while the computer shutdown on its own... is this possible with this controller?

thanks in advance.

**KyferEz** · 01-31-2005, 07:58 PM

Yes, that is exactly what the CarPC EZ power controller does.

The reason people use dc-dc power supplies for their systems is that the 12 volts in your car is not regulated, and if you use a standard atx motherboards or 3.5" hard drives, you need regulated 12volts. That is the biggest problem with PCs in the car (if you don't want to use an inverter). Well, the VIA systems don't use the 12 volt line, and neither does the laptop harddrive, thus you don't need a regulated 12v line. Likely, there is a dc-dc psu in the carputer case, something like a PW-60 that creates the 5v and 3.3 volts the pc needs to run.

Sounds like all you will need to do is install everything and you will be ready to go.

KyferEz

**SpectraCelica** · 01-31-2005, 10:34 PM

Alright thanks for the help

This site is out of the shutdown controller till late Feb.

Is there anything else I can use until I get one? Any other brand I can use perphaps?

Everything is installed in the car and is running perfectly, I just need a shutdown controller so I don't need to wait for the system to power down.