Thread: VW Jetta

Originally Posted by derek0606

Love the theme you have going. Industrial/Technological looks great and not everyone does it right like yours. Good luck with the show!

Thanks for the encouragement derek0606! I added another great feature that runs independent of the carPC. Check it out...



Long distance travel has never been more exciting! Now on board, is the ultimate in karaoke experience. Passengers get to sing along to their favorite songs, while their voice is transmitted through hi-fi surround sound car speakers. The mic is loaded with 10,000 titles in all genres!

Friends and family were surprised how all of this was integrated into the car...all done without an inverter or a ten mile extension cord?! lol

On the way to the store, my niece had a blast singing this song..

She did not want to leave the car, until her mom was ready to go home.

screens in the back headrest might be coming soon, along with other experimentation. Stay tuned..

pictures, pictures, and more pictures...

Looking back, it's been almost two years since this carPC project started. Much as been learned since day one of the initial fabrication. The image below is a reflection of my first cover plate design.

I decided to put the car pc up front, above the glove box, mainly because the benefits far outweighed placing the computer elsewhere in the car.

(2-10-2007)


I took cost, and convenience into consideration, with an emphasis on having the ability to keep the computer cool during the hot summer months.

This location proved to be worthwhile, because it sits in between two air conditioning vents. Therefore, allowing cool air to be routed towards the pc to keep things running smoothly.

Better yet, everything is within arms reach away, so, there was no need to run lengthy cables. Performing an upgrade, simply involved removing the cover plate that I fabricated.



PC size means everything- Shuttle introduced the small form factor PC back in 2001, targeted towards the gaming crowd with portability in mind. I chose the SFF shoe box design, due to it's compact size. Plus, having the ability to upgrade certain components in the future, proved to be advantageous.

Nevertheless, there were a few notable stumbling blocks that I've encountered along the way. I still wanted the ability to use the glove box for documents and such. So, putting a second hard drive inside, was not included in the plan. But because of space constraints, I still needed to put one there.

Anyhow, according to Tom's Hardware dot com, in terms of speed and sexiness, the Western Digital Raptor (the behemoth above) was touted 'king' of the hard drive sector. Boot up times are critical while on the go, so I wanted a hard drive that could perform quick.

With speed in mind, heat became a byproduct that needed to be addressed. Aside from the visible "cool factor", placing the hard drive on top of the plate, in plain view, was the best solution for me at the time.

Fast forward a year later, I have since put the Raptor hard drive back in my home computer where it belongs. The Antec 900 has no issue keeping the drive cool.

Lo and behold, back in April of 2008, Western Digital introduced a little brother that outperformed the beast, and even addressed the heat issue, so they say.

Well, after putting the VelociRaptor through its paces, I discovered that they made an effort to silence the drive. Gone is the 'tin can' chatter that they used to make. Past experience had also warranted the new, fancy blue, anodized aluminum heat sink seen below.

So, needless to say, another cover plate had to be designed for testing purposes while heat was closely being monitored. The drive is not cheap, mind you, Western Digital added the black "Ice Pak" heat sink with cooling taken into consideration.

Nevertheless, I impulsively decided to add my own remedy to aid in their design.

Running all day, the drive never reached a point where it was actually warmer than my finger tips! In my opinion, Western Digital rightfully deserves a big round of applause for their tireless efforts, and superior design. Not only is the drive 35% cooler, it's performs 35 percent faster.

Along came change twenty two...a third iteration of my hard drive cover design.

I took the advice that you guys gave me about "stealthing" the hard drive. That was a good call, special thanks goes out to Kensbey, and Mobbed for sharing their thoughts.

Out of sight, out of mind became my approach.


The VelociRaptor hard disk is now mounted directly underneath the motherboard together with the PC. Heat issues have finally been resolved when the blue air intake fan was added on the right side end the dash.

Anyhow, I'd like to think, that there's always room for improvement. Both cover plate designs allow the black airbag cover to hide the pc when not in use, or when the vehicle is parked.

What are your thoughts after looking at the diamond plate cover with just the exhaust fan visible? Seen here:




For comparison purposes, I decided on a new revision and made the next one black with a large "Vee" vent.


Can anything be done to enhance the appearance?

Which one looks better to you?

Windows 7 public beta was released yesterday. I will be testing it as soon as my car pc completes the behemoth 2.7Gb download.

Those of you who want to test drive the new release can get it here, then grab an exclusive beta product key here.

Remember to back up your data before giving this a try and it’s probably not best to run this on your primary machine. The beta key’s are supposedly valid until August 2009 and should give you a good preview of what is to come.

Doing the do? Let us know what your impressions are of Windows 7.


Happy Carputing ~ David

I just got back from a family get together and discovered that the carpc finished downloading Windows7.

Sitting in the Jetta, I decided to burn the 2.7 Gb ISO image to DVD; The carPC completed the operation in just under four minutes and seventeen seconds.

Here's a screen shot of the burn progress, and the initialization of my Windows 7 installation:



Installation in progress!

I hope you have fun with Win7. I know I have. It boots up WAY faster than Mojave(Vista).

Originally Posted by freeflashstuff

I hope you have fun with Win7. I know I have. It boots up WAY faster than Mojave(Vista).

Thanks Flash for the heads up...
Startup, shut down, hibernate, sleep, and resume times are the fastest i've seen. I'm so excited; Windows7 is awesome! I recently loaded it on the carPC, and registered my copy.

Here's a peek:



If you dig through the GUI, you'll discover that there are lots of other new enhancements.

*In the beginning, I couldn't figure out how to grab a screen shot via software, so I took some of these with my camera. I'm sure you can decipher which came from what. =)

WOW Windows 7 looks nice. Too bad I am scared to change my OS. I finally got my system running perfect, I would hate to have to start debugging again.

HiJack, don't be of Windows7.

It's the best OS, hands down! * grins

*I anticipate the opposition to come marching in* lol

Anyway, the only thing I could see that may use some fine tuning is in the "install". Again, the disc lacks a concise driver set. My SATA/RAID drivers were not found to be integrated on the installation disk.

Nevertheless, before any changes were made, Windows7 notified me in detail of this short coming via pop up screen. So, I closed the upgrade screen, downloaded, unzipped, and installed the exact driver requested from the motherboard manufacturer's website. After that, the installation ran without a hitch.

I kept my internet connection ON during the installation, and opted for the OS to check online for the latest updates. This might be why the installation took 25 minutes. I'm not sure exactly why, but considering it's a Beta release, everything turned out much better than I expected.

I get six second shut down times, three seconds to fully hibernate, and it resumes to usability in less than a minute.
Hibernate to resume is not right, because it takes longer than booting the OS into operation from scratch. however, sleep is one second away, and resume comes back into operation in less than two seconds. Start up to usability is thirty-five seconds without any tweaking done. Remember this is not a clean install, it's an upgrade.

I'm using AutoRuns to fine tune my start up time. I'm sure that I can attain quicker results by removing some functionality that I don't use in a car, like printer, network services and such.

Do I like the new look and feel? I am lost for words, all I kept saying was "wow!"

Windows7 is not a "resource hog" that many have claimed Vista to be during its infancy. I'd say it resembles Windows XP Pro, but surpasses it in terms of stability; with lots of great enhancements that address new technology.

Windows Media Player 12 is clean, streamlined, and feature rich with functionality never before seen in a stand alone media player.

Furthermore, Windows Paint has been revamped with new tools that are quite similar to those found in Piant Shop Pro. The Paint program is no longer targeted towards the "MS Paint for Dummies" crowd, it finally has more advanced functionality for editing pictures.

I, however, have been adept to using Adobe Photoshop since version 4, and will continue using it. Nevertheless, improvements have been added to MS Paint.

Internet Explorer version 8 looks convincing enough to switch over from firefox. I need to use it more, to make that final determination.

I figure that after three days of heavy usage, trying to become familiar with the GUI, I can say that I'm impressed with Windows7. Playing around with various configuration settings has not caused a single BSOD, or lock up. Microsoft has done a fantastic job with their beta release.

See for yourself if change is good. I think it is!



*Links to Windows7's direct download can be found on post#54, along with pre release product keys valid until August 2009. Enjoy!

I see alot of good reviews, unlike Vista that had so many bad reviews. I am just worried about stuff not working anymore. My install is so large and CF is working almost perfectly. What frontend do you use?