Newbie, but not so newbie

comptech_69 · 12-04-2006, 02:40 PM

I'm a newbie to the forum, but not a newbie to stuff like this. I work IT in a large cooperation and have been in the PC repair business for 13 years or so. Installing PC, stereos and all sorts of electronic gizmos in anything comes naturally to me. I myself in my car have dual 8" wide screen TFT monitors, a PS2 and my laptop integrates into the monitors and power supply of the car so it can be easily attached/detached. I mainly use the computer in my car for when I worked for dell as a mobile computer tech, not so much anymore though.

Well, the company I work for manufactures scales of all sorts. They actually make this scale called the FB 3000. This scale is a mini computer with all the bells & whistles. I'm probably going to dissect one and integrate it into my car and see the possibilities of getting the company to maybe reverse engineer these things for mobile A/V applications also.

One thing that I have been very interested in is drivesoft. The drivesoft software seems absolutely awesome. I've seen this implemented into cars on MTV's "Pimp My Ride" TV show and it seems to have allot of features. The program is a bit pricey for me ($50) for something that I'll be installing as just a demo to show what these scales can do in non-scale environments. Is there any [free] software that has the same, if not more features?

Also, I have noticed that there are not many companies that produce these mini computers for mobile use, the FB 3000 can be almost as simple as a plug & play application also. Would there be a good market out there for the sales of this unit as a mobile device?

This is the exact device I will be doing my dissecting and testing on.

DarquePervert · 12-04-2006, 04:56 PM

1) Nothing on PMR is "absolutely awesome". They create bling, nothing more.
2) The people from Drivesoft have been to these forums and behaved like assholes.
3) I don't know of anyone using the Drivesoft program that could review it because...
4) There are other "absolutely awesome" front0-end programs tailored for vehicle use that are free, and the coders don't treat you like scum.

comptech_69 · 12-05-2006, 08:50 PM

Yeah, PMR is nothing but a gathering of ridiculous useless crap that shouldn't be done to vehicles, but I did happen to watch an episode where they installed drivesoft in a truck, and seemed pretty amazing in it's feature aspect. But, i'll be sure to steer clear of drivesoft than.

I've browsed through the software section a bit, and which would be the best software with the most usable features for me to install on this thing to get a working demo? I'm thinking about downloading a few and experimenting with them. It seems that the RR software is the most popular, so I'll start with that first.

The car I'm going to be using is my own, which is OBD I. I know OBD I is pretty much useless for in-car computers, but the only OBD II car that is available to me is my girlfriend's Legacy - which is a total pile of junk.

Most unfortunately, these machines are running XP embedded - talk about not being able to do anything...

RedGTiVR6 · 12-06-2006, 07:33 AM

StreetDeck does everything that drive soft does and more.

many of the free front ends do more than drive soft as well.