RadRacer

Name's Mike and I drive a 1997 Camaro. I already have a decent system in it (2 CVR 12s, Pioneer 6.5's, all on amps with a JVC Arsenal HU), but am tired of craploads of CDs in my car. I then remembered an old PC I might be able to get a hold of; it was from my HS, and isn't all that new (P3, 256MB RAM, pretty slow). I was planning on doing a custom amp rack like in the rear deck area, and now am thinking of doing the same thing, except raising it a few inches so I can place the PC underneath (not in the case, dismantled) with a few fans to basically hide the whole system. Then, get a bigger HD (only had 15G or so in it ), touchscreen monitor, and a few accessories for it and call it a day . Any suggestions, opinions? I'm thinking a 7" touchscreen, that way it'll be fairly easy to make it look factory. Probably will be running Windows 95 or 98 or maybe a Linux set-up; something that doesn't need alot of power, but can still do music/movies/web browsing/GPS. Any suggestions on this? I plan on getting a 5.1 sound card and hook that directly to my amps, and hopefully control it all through a touchscreen up front. I think I covered most of my ideas/problems. So, what do you guys think?

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2k1Toaster

That PC is plenty. Depending on the speed of the P3, it is probably 500Mhz to 900Mhz judging from the age eh? You have to remember that music doesnt take a bunch of power .

You may want to look at nlite or tinyxp. Basically it will strip down XP to something that will boot fast and is easy on the RAM. Perfect for the P3. You dont want to use 95 or 98 because of the lack of good power options a.k.a. "it is now safe to turn off your computer" and software support. So a tiny XP install should do you well. You can look at linux but you have to do it for the love of linux because the nav options are pretty bare as well as the frontend options.

Also unless you have a centre speaker, 4.1 is what you mean (FL, FR, RL, RR, & Sub)

Something else you should look into are DC-DC powersupplies such as the M2-ATX or the Opus 150. Make sure your computer is ATX compliant and not AT standard though before you buy one (20pin probably on a P3).

Good luck, and welcome to the hobby!

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RadRacer

That's nice to know . IIRC, the PC had a bad HDD anyways, so replacing it and then putting in an OS should be about all that's needed to get it up and running again. I don't have a center speaker, but most cards I've seen still support the center speaker. I just wouldn't hook it up :P. I'm shopping right now :P Looking into the M3-ATX 125. I've got a few ideas, that I'll play with, and we'll see how she turns out.

RadRacer

Added it all up; I'm looking at around $650 for everything: PS, touchscreen, GPS Reciever, thin DVD drive, 80G HD, GeForce FX5500 Gfx Card, 5.1 Sound Card w/RCA outputs, Foldable keyboard, and a couple of fans. Quick question: How do you guys run your sound to your amps? RCAs are the usual, and what I've been using, but with the sound card, it has standard speaker jacks; I could put a LOC on them and get RCAs, but then the amplified sound it usually horrible .

2k1Toaster

3.5mm jack to RCA adapter. Look in the FAQ section and there is one with pictures and everything.

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brucedog

At ripping your cd's to cpc: there are several "lossless" ways to rip cd's to get better sound quality over the usual method of ripping them as mp3's.

I just used WMP, ripping my cd's as .wav files; never sounded better. A given cd takes about 500 - 700 mb.

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Happy CarPC'ing!

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