Thread: 06 Accord CarPC - LOTS of pictures!

Monday April 12th:

Since I'm taking over the cubby any way you slice it, I'm going to just put the touchscreen in there. I can unbolt the cubby, then bolt the touchscreen in. Then I can switch it back down the road when it comes time to sell/trade/upgrade or whatever comes along. I reached out to a couple different people that I thought could fabricate the job, but Nexson has done this type of fabrication before (and plenty of others), he responded real quick, and so I decided to go with him. Per his recommendation, I removed the screen from the housing and packaged up only the parts he needed.

I had never taken apart the Lilliput before, but it wasn't that difficult. Remember, I'm taking apart my Lilliput EBY701.

Remove the 4 screws from the back of the bezel. Break the paper seal at the bottom, then gently apply pressure to the top & bottom and carefully pull the bezel apart.

Carefully remove the two ribbons between the screen & board. I did not remove the connection for the buttons as the plastic holding it together was weak.

Remove 4 screws from the back of the touchscreen. Carefully remove touchscreen and place safely in an antistatic bag (I'm storing mine during fabrication).

Remove 3 screws from the control board. Lift control board & buttons out. I am storing the Control Board in anti static and shipping the buttons with the bezel to Nexson.

Remove 4 screws from the board. Remove speaker wire from the board. I placed the board in an antistitc bag as well.

I removed the speaker entirely as I had no use for it, it has a nice strong magnet and I don't want it visiting the equipment while in storage. I also made pouches from some recycled paper for the screws/brackets and labeled them accordingly. This will make it easier to put back together.

Nexson needed the plastic buttons for the controls so I put those in a little pouch to keep 'em safe, wrapped everything up and sent it off via USPS Priority (Insured as well!) mail. Very important to insure EVERYTHING for what they're worth at the point of shipping. To me, those bezel pieces I sent him might as well be a new touchscreen. They got $200 worth of insurance. When he ships back the completed bezels, insurance of $200 + Labor costs. Nexson gave me an estimate of 2 weeks (fabrication + shipping times). That will give me plenty of time to get other parts ordered that I need, and start building the PC.

Saturday April 17th:

Today I took some pictures of the "new" stuff. You can see the dust that has been collecting on this equipment, just waiting to go into the Accord! As a reminder, I went from the Zotac 630i-ITX WiFi Motherboard to the Zotac 9300-D-E HDMI w/ Wireless. I'm also going from the Intel Celeron 430 to the Intel Celeron 2.2GHz, and finally; from the 2x2GB Kingston Low Profile DDR2 RAM to the OCZ nVidia 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400 RAM.

I also ordered the M4-ATX Enclosure yesterday, and the BU 353 GPS today.

Monday April 19th:

Nothing really special about this update, but Nexson sent me some photos of the fabrication in progress. It'll be mixed emotions when I install the screen in the cubby. I love my cubby, so I'll be sad to pull it out. But I also love the CarPC idea...so I'll be happy to put it in. *sigh*

Looking pretty good!!! I should be done by Tuesday, taking my time with this one.

Good start and great job on the bezel.

Tuesday April 20th:

Fabrication has been completed by Nexson! He sent the finished photos! Drooling, ready to take out the cubby and put this in, even if the Mrs. is not!
BTW: LOVE the stacks of Sunkist in the background. Can you spot them? lol

I was hoping you got one of the older Accords. I actually like the last one before they went to the design you have. Your design is still better then the latest one, good I hate the latest Accord.

Its also nice to see that Nexson is doing some fabrication, to bad he never got back to me :-\.

Congrats on the MoBo..... I to have bought a Zotac, the reviews for it are just great. Now I am saving up for the QUAD core, RAM, and two SSD Drives so I can use Raid 0. This should make my Car PC one of the fastest and insane BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Whats nice about the Zotac, so I read, is that the BIOS is not slow.

I will say though, I think there is one aspect you should rethink. Get rid of XP and go Win 7. The hybrid sleep feature in 7 is just to good to pass up. You go to your car, turn the key and your setup is just on, like a head unit. If the system drains to much power, the PSU says the voltage is too low, then the PC hibernates, so you can start where you left off, then cuts power so you can start your car the next day. Also Win 7 is just as fast as XP and has alot of added benefits. It can also use SSD better so the drive isn't killed and you have to sit there and worry about EWF and HORM to save the drive. You can just use the drive as is.

On my rear systems I decided to go with XP and EWF only because these units can not power down on their own. They are simply cut from power. By using EWF I avoid data corruption from using a method that shouldn't be done, lol.

HiJac...err I mean Cruizer... Thanks for the feedback!

I put Windows 7 on my CarPC before it died. It fixed some issues with that hub, but I thought I'd take another crack at XP again. Maybe I'll scratch the XP and take another crack at Windows 7.

I like the 06/07 models better than the 05/08 ones. I know what you mean about their new design. Not as thrilled with it.

They kinda did a goofy thing with the 06/07 Accord - it was like they were trying to warm people up to the new design, 'cause it's different than the 05 - but 05 was still 7th gen, then 08 was 8th gen. Though from what I've read quite a bit was changed from 05 to 06.

It's weird to see your name as Cruizer, I still wanna call you HiJack everytime I see your name show up.

Originally Posted by simpleman

Good start and great job on the bezel.

I'm not the one doing the bezel, Nexson is. I wish I had his skills, but we came to an agreement. I send him some "greenbacks", he does the work