Thread: 2000 Benz ML320 CarPC

Originally Posted by JeeP-3

Where did you pick up the Card reader combo and USB thingy?

What size is it? Is that a standard floppy drive size or ???

Very cool BTW...

Ebay,($27 with shipping) Media card reader

Yes it fits in a 3.5 floppy bay, in fact I used a 5.25 mounting bracket designed for a combo SlimDVD/3.5 floppy to hold the card reader and the drive, after cutting off the face plate of the mounting kit.

UPDATE: (no new pictures to see)

Well, I had very lofty plans (MicroATX P4 mobo with 250GB hard drive, ATI All-in-wonder, blah blah blah) for my CarPC, but the only case that would fit under my passenger seat, that supported PCI cards, was the Casetronice C137, and it was going to take too much "hacking" to get a microATX board & PSU in there. I was also a bit worried about heat, fans and noise.

But most importantly, I wanted something working for a Thanksgiving trip TODAY.

Sooo, I made a last minute decision to go the EPIA M-10000. Put it together last night and have it sitting on the floor, not "installed" yet. The Casetronic 90W PSU with the 19V laptop car adapter seems to work just fine.

As I was testing it in the house last night with some cheap PC speakers, I thought the onbourd sound was very "tin"ey, no bass, so I figured I would have to do like others and get an external sound card, HOWEVER, when I put it in the car this car morning it sounded great to me. I guess it has to do with the stock sub-woofer in my car.

WARNING: I'm not a "stereo-guy", I have the stock stereo, no amps and what not, and I don't get *****y about FM radio quality. So you may care more, but to me it sounds just that same as from my CD player. Your ears may be different, but I'm very pleased with the onboard sound.

I have the Lilliput sitting (again not installed) right in front of my gear shift. powered from the 90W PSU.

My only complaints so far are the visualizations in MediaCar are waaayyy slowww, compare to my 2.4Ghz, which doesn't really matter because the glare on the Lilliput is HORRENDOUS. ARGH!!! Should be ok at night

Other than that it's one of the coolest things I've ever done with computers.

A big thanks to everyone here.

Have a nice Thanksgiving.

UPDATE:

No problems with the M-10000 and the C137.

I like the C137, except that I have to slide it under the passenger seat and THEN connect all the cables. Not much room to work so that was fairly tough.

I wanted to test a fairly straight forward setup so I currently have the DVD attached via IDE in the C137, rather than the firewire. I was uncertain about grounding issues with the dash mounted DVD and firewire bridge, so I now have a baseline to judge from. (for when I do the dash install)

The laptop DC adapter works very well, except it (as expected) won't survive an ignition crank. Also it is fanless, which means quiet. I don't know how noisy the OPUS fan is. I also like the idea of being able to remove the C137 from the car (before I found out how difficult it is) and use an ac adapter to power it inside, when I go away for the weekend. So I'm "sort of" re-considering the OPUS, since manually shutting it down is not that big of a deal for me.

Can't hear the M-10000's CPU fan, but the C137 case fan is VERY noisy so I disconnected it. After a 2 hour trip of watching movies the cpu was about 117F and the case was 107F, measured with MBM5. This didn't seem too bad to me, but I haven't asked around for opinions. I plan on either placing a quieter fan or speed regulator on the current fan.

The only real troubles I've had are with the screen. It's placed where the glare makes it virtually unusable if it's a sunny day, and the Touchscreen plastic film comes loose when it's cold, so that it also keeps "pressing" the lower right hand corner of the screen. I'm gonna try and get a replacement, so I will probably wait till I resolve that before I get the OPUS.

Again I'm surpirsed and very pleased with the sound quality, although I've heard others complain.

It's plugged into a non-switched outlet, so the CarPC continues to run if I turn the engine off.