peters62

I am investigating building a mp3 player for my 98 Grand Prix. I am looking at a Celeron 400mhz on a SuperMicro 370SWD mother board. I want the system display to be a touch screen around 6" range am open to ideas about how much memory 64 or 128 and what operating system that would work best windows or linux? For a sound card was looking at Sound Blaster MP3+ sound card to feed into my EQ. Any Ideas for a display and associated video controller? Budget for this project is about $1000.00

Thanks for the imput

MP3Car.com

 

JustAGuy

Since nobody else has replied yet I will lend some advice.

#1 - if you want to save money you can get cheaper equipment....a 400 with 64mb of ram may be overkill

#2 - if you are familiar with linux, use it...the next best choice is probably DOS and then windows...but it all depends on what you want hooked up

#3 - dont know if the SB MP3 is worth the extra money

Anyway, hope this helps a lil' bit

JustAGuy

peters62

ok what would be the minimum memory and processor requirements for a car mp3 player using a Touch screen Linux or Dos ?


Thanks

porch monkey

just go with something simple like a pII 300 and 64mb or 128mb of ram. or even just buy a newer celeron. You have quite the budget, and throwing it away on something like fast hardware for your car would be stupid. spend more money on the screen or get a bigger hard drive. unless you're playing computer games in your car don't even worry about a 300 will be very good. do whatever you want though. If i had 1000 to spend i'd go for a celeron system with 64mb of ram and a nice big hard drive. don't bother with the sb mp3 card, waste of money, for suckers only. just get a live or something, don't spend a lot. put your money into other stuff! buy a new head unit or get better speakers etc...

Erik

If you only want to play MP3's, then a Pentium-133 with 32MB memory is more than enough.
I'm using a Pentium-233 with 64MB memory, works like a dream.

peters62

The rest of my Sound system is a factory head unit because of the heads up display and steering wheel controls feeding a pair of crystal audio line level converters connected to a Sony 1000X crossover feeding 2 soundstream referance 644 amps for highs and mids and a soundstream referance 300 for subs The speakers are Polk DB series 5.25" mids, 4" mids, and 6" mids for highs 2 pair of DB3000 Tweeters. The subs are a pair of Polk DB10" which all works great togather.Ok lets get spcecific how about some exact recomedations for hardware for a reasonable priced 6" touch screen if there is such a thing and what motherboards work well was thinking about a BabyAT form factor. To connect the best into my system would prefer to have 4 outputs 2 fronts and 2 rears to connect into my crossover. Also is there any advantage of dma66 vs dma33 hard drives for playing mp3?

Thanks

ezcomp

OK, if you want front and rear outputs from your sound card, you will need to splurge a little bit and get a card with 4 spearker output, IIRC. A SB live may have this capability, not sure though.
As for the mother board, check out the Jet board, it supposedly has good onboard audio: http://www.j-mark.com/Product/mb/j530bf.html
It says it has 3D audio support, don't know exactly if this will support front/rear like you want. If it doesn't you may want to get a normal baby atx mobo and then just do this:
Line Out->1/4" to RCA converter->RCA "Y" cables to get the 4 RCA outputs you will want, all though it won't be true 3D sound.
As for a processor, the minimum the board will support should work, most boards these days will support 300 and up, so 300 is fine.
DMA66 is not necesary but most HDs these days have it, but 33 will definitly work. 64mb RAM is plenty also. Good luck,

-wc

PS- for good LCD screens I recommend these sites:
http://www.alpine1.com - very expensive but *really* nice, no touch screens, but you won't care when you see them. http://www.flat-panel.com - good stuff. http://www.partsexpress.com - more "OEM" looking products, good prices.

[This message has been edited by ezcomp (edited 05-06-2000).]

[This message has been edited by ezcomp (edited 05-06-2000).]

peters62

Thanks for your infromation anyone know of a reasonable priced source of a 4"-6" Touch screen only plan on using it to controll the mp3 player but dont want to spend $800.00 on one. looks like a should be able to get a motherboard, cpu, and memory for about $200.00 leaving me aprox $800.00 for hard drive display and powersupply

Thanks

MP3Car.com