stephanos

hey guys

totally new to this. was always into a car PC so I went and got those gps/dvd/kitchen sink combo 2 din car decks.

incase your curious, this is the unit:
http://www.xtrons.com/doce/productdetail.aspx?pid=43

to fit it in my mums A class A190 was quiet a pain in the ***, i had to actually modify the fascia and harness to fit this in all good in the end though.

its a great unit from hong kong, cost me $400 (australian) shipped to my front door. of course the software it is using at the moment is hideous (it wont run my iphone properly and even if you use USB drive it will only read "upto 8 characters" what is this windows 95?!) and my spidey senses tell me its using windows CE in the background. so id like to use this to base my new carputer on.

my friend told me of this website and told me stuff like;
* apparently atm windows CE on it is chinese, can be flashed to english
* can run software like itunes, winamp etc.

my questions are, if the above is possible,
* would it recognise the usb device, or ipod (or my iphone) device, like any other once flashed to windows CE? ie. can i make it boot up like you would a computer but its a deck?
* how do i actually access windows CE? ive read some vague descriptions on other GPS Sites mentioning an autorun hack, onboard keyboard etc. but people beneath that were posting how their touch screen was no longer calibrated etc so i got kinda paranoid

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soundman98

a kitchen sink combo unit?!? i knew i was missing something!

you might get a better answer from the hardware/software guys that usually roam the general topic/software area(ask one of the mods to move it, don't double post). hacking a windows CE system is over my head after the 'windows CE' part

i think i have seen some of the posts from others that have hacked win ce in the past, but it is not a "press here, click here" type thing--it usually involves tearing the unit apart and reprogramming specific chips- with a programmer that i would probably end up being so clueless with, i would try to use it as a turkey cooker... most of the people that do it have no problem making their own sofware when they don't like the interface of whats out there, and have at least some sort of programming/electrical degree.

overall, it looks like a decent unit (thoughts of remote mounting the display popping into my head), though i am not convinced that it is even the begining of a car computer-- from what i have read, i think that the processor is too slow to handle most carpc functions.


also, head on over to the avic411 forums-- there are alot of guys over there that have hacked the pioneer units-- so you might be able to get some help from them also.

stephanos

hahah :P thanks for the post buddy, wow really? yeah it might really be a nugget of a car pc but im only after running something like a better mp3 player JUST so i can see more than the standard retaded 8 char limit (Which has a suffix of ~1) on all song names and maybe fix up the gps maps it gave me, nothing too fantastic

edit; i know these things can be hacked to something nicer, for instance ipod touch/iphone dont even work when plugged in. but looking at this video ( ) you can see some guy got his ipod touch (or iphone?) to work and even interact with the menu very nic ely. I sent him a PM on youtube but he tells me that he never hacked the firmware and just worked out of the box which kinda wierds me out how i have a newer model (td716g) and it wont work (this is an ebay little buy so swapping too it is not an option, plus id like to know how to hack these things)

also dont be too afraid to throw some big words at me, ive been building computers since i could walk. always into computers, just my software programming side isnt very polished

thanks alot guys

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