about to make my first CarPC

Eclipse-GST · 02-08-2005, 04:12 PM

...and ive got a few questions. First off im going to mainly want to be able to play mp3's and do navigation with the carputer, with occasionally playing a divx movie on a long trip. I have found a good deal on a used computer, but its only 900mhz, will this be enough for GPS use and playing divx files??

My second question is this... I have decided to go with the inverter route, mainly because that is all I can justify spending at the moment. Can anyone suggest a good inverter (im thinking around 400 watts to be safe) that I can easily extend the power switch up to my dash. I was also wondering if there is a way to make the one switch also power up the computer?

Lastly, I ordered a Xenarc monitor... would the easiest way to power it be to just plug it into the inverter?

Also if anyone can point me in the direction of how to hard wire the inverter in my car that would be great!!

Thank you!!
Austin

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1999 Eclipse GS-T
-CarPC Coming soon

Grimey · 02-09-2005, 08:24 AM

Could you please give some more specs on the computer? RAM mainly, 900 Mhz should be alright to watch movies but if you only have say 128 MB of RAM then no.

I would respond to your inverter question but I'm still new to the game as well sorry.

jcdillin · 02-09-2005, 08:39 AM

I use a APC300 inverter and it works great, no noise in my audio and it survives cranking the engine with the computer turned on. As far as turning the inverter on you could either extend the switch or you could just use a relay attached to your ACC wire to turn the inverter on when you start the car.

Eclipse-GST · 02-09-2005, 11:39 AM

Grimey: right now it has 256megs of ram, though for 20$ or so I can bump it up to 512 megs of ram. The motherboard supports up to a ~1.5ghz athlon, which I can get for around 50$ now... figure it would be worth it.

jcdillin: Ill have to check out that inverter... do you have it wired directly to the battery??

Thanks for the help! Cant wait to get this project going

Austin

Grimey · 02-09-2005, 11:49 AM

My recommendation would be to spend the 20 bucks and go up to 512. The CPU should be at an alright speed. I've read all over the place of people using those and 1ghz and as long as your memory is up there you should be okay. Just curious, what type of RAM is it?

If you have the extra cash to upgrade it might be wise but I would start with RAM first, you can always add the new chip later if you notice a lot of lag in your system.

stevieg · 02-10-2005, 04:52 PM

900mhz will be a little iffy for 900mhz and playing Divx at the same time. 256MB-512MB won't make any real performance difference to a car pc to be honest, if you plan on using hibernation then it will slow you down more than anything. If you are using XP, have alook at how much you can strip it out. With explorer running through Minlogon it's easy enough to get down to less than 50MB ram used with very few tweaks, on top of that a front end running will still be less than 100MB ram used. If you are careful enough you can run 256MB on a car pc with no paging file to eak a few extra mph out of it... You might want to look at decent graphics accelleration though for your divx though as the 900Mhz will struggle if the video cards a piece of *****.