Well, I just added some more facilities to be able to better update and play with the carputer while the car is in my garage - without removing anything.
1. First I had to use wired 1GbE connection simply because wi-fi is too slow. But it's a pain to reach the ethernet connection in the back of the case, so I took 1foot CAt5E patch cord, a
female-female RJ45 adapter (bought at Fry's for like 2 bucks, you can find it on e-bay too)
and did the following: plug one end of the 1ft cable to the back of the computer, the other end in the back of the above coupler; the other end is left open, secured out of sight to the front of the seat. I can just pull it from there and plug my ethernet cable easily, even in the dark, no tools necessary.
2. Now how about the power source? You don't want to drain your battery, but you also don't want to unscrew the cables to your PSU, right?
So I did the following: I bought two 80 amp DC circuit brakers from the
mp3car store; on sale now for 9.99 (from 32.99). Why two? well, one for the positive, one for the ground to complete isolate the battery and the car from my test bench 300W ATX PSU (modded according to the
PSU faq thread).
Now you do this: you hook the + side from the battery into the BATT side on the circuit braker. On the other side, you hook two wires, one to the DC DC PSU you were using, the other one you hook to a 12 gauge stranded cable you'll later attach a molex male connector on the other end.
You do the same with the - or ground: you attach your current ground cable to the BATT side of the circuit braker. On the other side of the circuit braker, you attach two wires, one to the DC PSU (think one, I cut from the same one I used before), another to the molex connector.
Now you simply attach the molex connector to the ATX PSU that was your test bench, and there you have it. When you want to hook the carputer to the battery, you close the circuit braker. When you want to unhook the carputer from the battery, you press the two big red buttons, hook the molex connector to any free HD PATA connector on your test bench ATX AC PSU, and you can play with your carputer for the whole weekend: updating, synchronizing, defragmenting, ghosting, etc.
Note that you also have
TWO ACC wires going into the ACC input into your ACC connector in your DC DC PSU. One is 12v from the car, the other comes from your test bench. I removed the one from my test bench and it gets power from the wires in the molex connector that stays in the car, when the ATX PSU has power, it will give ACC power to the DSATX, M4ATX or whatever. No tools necessary.
I hope the explanation is clear, any questions, just ask.
Also, if you have a powered USB hub that turns on with your computer, but that it gets power directly from the battery (
like this one), used for your GPS or whatever, make sure it now will be powered from the computer too (any free molex you used for the HD, Monitor, etc.), or it will drain your battery. Don't ask how I found out about this.
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