Thread: '02 Toyota celica TS

Sorry about getting your black baby punched to the boneyard. The gray looks good, though . . .

I'm not hands-on familiar with the ARTiGO PicoITX kit, but I've been reading about it.

First idea: it has both SATA and IDE connectors. Could you use a SATA hard drive and add an IDE CD player during setup? It would probably require a 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter, and you'd have to get a SATA cable.

Second idea: I believe the board has a 2.5" IDE interface. (1) Can it support two drives on that interface? (2) Can you select the boot source in BIOS?

If the answer to both of those questions is "yes", then two inexpensive 2.5"-to-3.5" adapters might do the trick. If you use one of the 2.5"-to-3.5" adapters to attach a standard IDE cable, then use one connection for the other 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter with a 2.5" IDE hard drive (as master), and the second connection for a standard IDE CD player (as slave).

Set the BIOS to boot from HD first and CD second, and it will boot from the CD because it won't see a formatted HD. You'd be in business.

I hope one of these works for you . . .

Originally Posted by rdholtz

Sorry about getting your black baby punched to the boneyard. The gray looks good, though . . .

First idea: it has both SATA and IDE connectors. Could you use a SATA hard drive and add an IDE CD player during setup? It would probably require a 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter, and you'd have to get a SATA cable.

Second idea: I believe the board has a 2.5" IDE interface. (1) Can it support two drives on that interface? (2) Can you select the boot source in BIOS?

Set the BIOS to boot from HD first and CD second, and it will boot from the CD because it won't see a formatted HD. You'd be in business.

I hope one of these works for you . . .

Damn ... it's been ages since i've been here. Back on track though.

In the end I just coughed up the money and bought an external USB CD-drive. Came in handy as well since my trusted laptop (Thinkpad X60) also doesn't have a CD.

All was well until one day i was fiddling with the pico-itx and a plume of smoke rose from the mobo. Don't exactly know what went wrong, but it went wrong big time and that's the end of the pico-itx story.

The new plan
Go with a laptop based install.
I've been playing with this idea for some time, but it had one major downside : sound quality of my thinkpad SUCKS big time.
While i was thinking about this audio quality thingy, I got myself a nice pioneer head unit with Bluetooth and used my phone (HTC Polaris) as music player. Works as a charm, and got me thinking. If that phone can get a good quality audio signal to the had unit, than my lappy should be able to do the same. And guess what, the crappy sound is really due to the hardware audio card. When i hook it up through BT i get decent sound. (i'm sure audiophiles will still think it's crappy, but for my ears it's more than good enough)
Next problem, my music collection is rather extensive and won't go on the standard HD, so an upgrade is in order. I bought myself a nice 320Gb hd, which spins at 7200 rpm. So getting some speed update as well. The downside is that cloning the HD didn't work (tried almost all software and none worked)
So spent another couple of hours setting up my lappy again with the new HD.

Anyway, the last couple of days i got it all together and installed
Ultrabase X6 - installed in the booth
Thinkpad X60 - set up with separate Carputer account and the necessary music and software
700IDT - installed in dash (duh) and wired to the base in the booth

Future plans
- get GPS navigation going (preferably fast since i'm leaving on a snowboard trip soon :-p)
- use second video capabilities of the screen. (backup camera)

oh and i know this thread needs pictures

Originally Posted by John_Duh

The downside is that cloning the HD didn't work (tried almost all software and none worked). So spent another couple of hours setting up my lappy again with the new HD.

What likely happened is that, while your PicoITX was a Via chip, the laptop is probably Intel or AMD. It's nearly impossible to clone drives from a board based on one manufacturer's processor to a board based on another's processor. I'm told it can be done in theory, but I've never known anyone who actually did it.