Dell Studio Hybrid (Installed in vehicle, 12v-24v) - Page 4

sirnephilim · 09-14-2008, 12:38 AM

I'm kinda giggling at having seen the Blu-Ray option on that PC. Pretty sure the onboard graphics couldn't play HD on its best day unless Intel really, really got on the ball recently.

Other than that... it's a mITX Intel board - probably the DG45FC - the same thing a lot of folks on this board have for their CarPC already. With a Voom case you could do a better purpose-build and probably beat the price too.

Hm. The DG45FC has a PCIx slot... could put an X-Fi or other sound card in there and blow the onboard away if you have room. Or maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161079 a PCIx x1 video card... Gotta be better than Intel's...

WayneVanRooyen · 09-15-2008, 04:25 AM

I looked at the DG45FC unless Dell get this board modded seriously i would say its not this board. The hybrid doesnt have any sata ports, from the image on the intel site where the stata ports are dell have 2 wireless card slots there, mine has a wireless in one and the other is empty. The internal speaker is also not on the board as well as the battery, so off the top i would say this isnt a DG45FC. I have connected the hybrid up to my hi-def tv 1080i and the video plays fine with a 1920x1080 video, this is a wmv clip though, dont know if this will make any difference but i dont have any blue-ray to test. my intention was not for home theatre but to buy something reliable and not put together by parts bough from all over the place, so the hybrid was my answer after trying out a packard bell easynote xs notebook, the xs was to slow and only had a 30g drive and gave problems when resuming from hybernating, it kept loosing the usb devices and a restart had to happen to detect them again. So far the hybrid has behaved, a quick test the outer pins on the power are 19.6v and the center looked like it was a ground, i connected the center pin and the positive of the poweer jack and got a reading of about 12v. Need to sit down and realy do some testing to see what power i require as the standard dc-dc convertor i have does not power the device to the stage that windows starts, the hybrids lights up and then swithces off again doesnt even go past the post screen (dell logo)
Will get more pics as requested and keep everyone posted.

WayneVanRooyen · 09-16-2008, 02:27 AM

Some pics showing the power switch and cable, not very good at taking pictures as you can see.
The cable is a little 4 pin plug, 2 go to the light on the power switch the other 2 are for the switch itself.
These 2 wires are yellow and grey i put a tester and pushed the switch to see if it closed the circuit and it did, so this is like any normal pc switch that when the button is pressed it closes the loop.

I also discovered what the second mini pci slot is for, it is marked BD so i am presuming that when you order the blue-ray option this is where the BD decoder board goes as well as the swap out of the player itself

Fiberoptic · 09-16-2008, 01:34 PM

Can you see a part number on there for the four pin connector?

I assume carnetix would make a 1"-2" female to male cable with a 'splice in' that would connect to the carnetix. That way the power of the dell studio would either be controlled by the ignition status or the button.

Is there a hole in the back that you could run that wire through or would you need to drill something?

WayneVanRooyen · 09-17-2008, 02:22 AM

Havent got the machine open anymore but can open and check for the part number. In the pic it looks like there is a part number sticker on the actual cable, would i be right in saying you want the part number for the cable side with plug or the plug on the actual board itself. Should be pretty easy as Dell seem to put part numbers and Rev tags on nearly everything they make.
The machine itself has some sort of airflow grooves or openings on the front so should be easy enough to run a cable through without having to drill

Fiberoptic · 09-17-2008, 09:46 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by WayneVanRooyen

Havent got the machine open anymore but can open and check for the part number. In the pic it looks like there is a part number sticker on the actual cable, would i be right in saying you want the part number for the cable side with plug or the plug on the actual board itself. Should be pretty easy as Dell seem to put part numbers and Rev tags on nearly everything they make.
The machine itself has some sort of airflow grooves or openings on the front so should be easy enough to run a cable through without having to drill

Either number would be a pointer in the right direction

chilean03n · 10-10-2008, 07:18 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Fiberoptic

Thanks for the photos! This is great.

Would you be able to take a high resolution photo of where the power button connects to the motherboard? it would be really nice to have the p2140 or the p1900 be able to control the on off state of the computer based on ignition status of your boat or car.

There are tons of adapters out on the market for dell laptops. There are a few drawbacks to using one of those with the dell studio:

There is no built in battery on the dell studio. If your cig lighter is ignition switched it will immediately kill power to your PC causing a hard shut down.
If your cig lighter is not ignition switched and you forget to turn off your pc you will have a dead battery.
No auto shut down (as I mentioned above)

All of these issues are solved by the p2140 and the p1900. (shut down time, low voltage, auto shut down)

Good luck with the install.

So as I have understood, I can buy, for example, a universal laptop charger (like this http://www.calcellular.com/lap-charger-car-d.html) and use it to power up a Dell Studio Hybrid on my car by a cig lighter, with the only consequences being that it will not auto shut down, but do a hard shut down on the computer? If it is, then I can just turn off the computer before turning of the car, and it will all be safe, right?

I am planning on buying a Mazda6 soon, and I will probably try to buy a Studio Hybrid.

Thanks, Nick

ik632 · 10-25-2008, 07:20 PM

There are a number of shutdown controllers that should work with this. I just recently saw a startup and shutdown controller from mo-co-so.com that looks like it might work with the Dell power supply. It would require some creative wiring, but I think it will work.

You could always go with one of the other shutdown controllers. All you really need is some way to trigger the power button on the board and then power until the car is off. Most controllers will take care of this.

Fiberoptic · 10-27-2008, 06:01 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Store customer

Hi Guys,
The dell hybrid connector is a standard dell laptop connection, and it even ships with a dell laptop power supply. Additionally, I can confirm it works with a lilliput VGA touchscreen with a DVI to VGA adapter. I know this was talked about on the forums. Good luck. Thanks,

- Mark

WayneVanRooyen · 03-11-2009, 03:26 AM

Update, i have slowley been putting my car pc to gether still dont have a power option as yet any suggestions to a solutions would be great if anyone has tested what has been said in previous posts.

Anyway i can say i have also recently installed a full vista platform and done nothing more than shut down a few services etc, tested startup and shutdown time using the powers switch on the machine with S3 set in the bios. Testing between XP and Vista was done and i cant tell you how this is possible but vista brings centrufuse up a lot faster that XP. The hybrid is fast for centrafuse and from sleep mode it brings CF back in 4 seconds where XP was doing it in about 8.
Bearing in mind though that the Hybrid was built for vista and this could be due to not being able to find xp drivers for the Hybrid on dells site but i did find xp drivers for the devices on another site.

So as far as i am concerned i am very impressed with the hybrid.

ik632 · 03-11-2009, 04:45 PM

What did you end up using for a power supply for the car?

WayneVanRooyen · 03-16-2009, 08:29 AM

eerrrm my first line says i dont have a power supply as yet and was option to suggestions, right now just using a convertor and the relay swith method

ik632 · 03-16-2009, 08:50 AM

I was hoping you found a solution after you posted that. Still sounds pretty good. I wonder if the carinetix would do what you need?

WayneVanRooyen · 03-17-2009, 08:15 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by ik632

I was hoping you found a solution after you posted that. Still sounds pretty good. I wonder if the carinetix would do what you need?

I was looking at the one mentioned here on this topic the P1900 or something like that, just was waiting to see if the power brick center pin is providing a signal or providing a flat rate power.

Brainless · 03-17-2009, 04:20 PM

i have tried 3 different 90W universal power adapters from Targus all of them with tip #S34 on a Dell Studio Hybrid 140g:

APM12US | Targus Notebook 90W AC/DC Power Adapter
http://www.targus.com/us/product_det...sp?sku=APM12US
this one came with cigarette lighter 12v plug.

and

APA01 and APA63 (from Staples)
Not listed on site

all of them worked perfect, I only got the power adapter bios message the first time i plugged one of them in and hit f1 to continue. After that i never received the message again even after switching between adapters.

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