Thread: Wamphyri's first build!

Update......

Ordered the case, motherboard, CPU, RAM and the Sabrent TVFM card last week. Shipment arrived at the house on Tuesday. I was psyched to get home and put it together and burn it in.

Opened the box with the case.... the plastic front bezel was broke right off the case and the side had been crushed. Anybody seen Ace Ventura? Went back online and RMA'd the unit. So depressing to have all the parts but not the case.... Boxed up the case the next morning and sent it back...

Thursday I was going over the hardware. Couldn't do anything else with it

Opened the TVFM tuner and looked it over... what kind of connector is this???? Thought it was the FM ant connector because it sure wasn't the CATV connector. Looked at the back of the box ... it had a sticker that said PAL (I live in Florida - PAL won't work). Damnit!!!!! Called Newegg customer service.... 15 minutes later they waived the restock fee and gave me a credit for shipping. The bad news is that the tuners were out of stock. So I ordered the Compro Videomate PCI card. Should be here next week. Packaged the card up and shipped it out this morning.

More to come...

Well here we go again... This time I have to laugh.. it's all I can do.

Got the new TV tuner card. This time is was NTSC. What a relief.... now maybe it will work for TV/FM and radiator...

Friday the case came. For some reason I wasn't excited about it and was late comming home from work. After dinner I opened the box. The case was all busted up again.

Time to call NewEgg again and get another RMA. The girl on the other end was helpfull as always. Love the NewEgg. This time I ordered a different case so we will see. Here is the case that I ordered this time... biege... bluck...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811108339

In the mean time, I might as well use the power supply to burn in the system and load Windows. I have an old copy of 2000 server that isn't being used so I will try that.

I plan to load the OS, drivers, codecs, etc. over the week until the new case comes. Saw a really good skin for RR by Zots that I would like to try out.

Laters.

I hate when I get stuff from online and it has been smashed. I had a case with an acrylic window I got for review for my site and the side of the box was smashed in and shattered the window... I was so mad and sad. I once got another box from Italy shipped USPS and it was litterly round, all the edges of the box were smashed in.. So basically I know your pain.

I cant wait to see which car you put it in because both are cool cars to put a carputer in. I think you will be the 2nd person running windows 2000 server on their carputer too.

Thanks Sniperxx, I knew somebody else has had the same experience.

Loaded the OS, drivers, codecs and apps last night. Setup autologon and will autostart CF once I have it setup the way I want.

Installed my new Compro VideoMate TV tuner. Boy what a piece of crap. The TV side isn't so bad but the FM side is total crap. It wanders frequency's so bad it pathetic. Not to mention it is off a few tenths! Didn't work right with radiator either so its time to send that one back.

I need some real help chosing another. All my research points to the WinTV401. What do you all think? Is is good? Will it work with radiator and CF?

Thanks.

Its been a loooong time since I have updated. Have been busy working on the project though!

Things have changed dramatically. Got a new car, a new display and a couple of new components.

Traded the corvette for the Scion. I know..... the convertible top on the vette started to leak and it was gonna cost $3K to replace. It needed some maintenance also. Anyways the Scion is really fun and someday I will be back in a vette

Got an ELO touch screen. It's really bright and uses IR beams instead of resistive overlay. The only drawback is that its 12.1 inches! No way to mould that into the dash so I had to get a little creative. With the Scion I had a double din to start with but it still wasn't large enough to accomodate the screen. I decided to make a shell to fit in the radio's place. I went to a local car audio shop that specializes in custom fabs. They gave me a quote of $600 to 800 for the display installation. Ah.... I decided to do it myself.

Went to a local machine shop. The guy there was really nice. He told me that if he did the CAD work and used aluminum it would cost around $500. WHAT???? He then said if I did the CAD work it would cost about $100. Thats better! Found a copy of Solidworks and began doing the tutorials... Four days later I emailed him the assembly and he had it done about a week later. Cost me $107.00.

Here are some pics of the assembly and a couple of test mounts.

The shell was designed to use the brackets off of the existing radio. Also if I want to change it to another vehicle I can fab new brackets and use the same shell! (My wife can up with this so I have to give her credit)

Started working on the front bezel. The idea was to used MDF and coat it with expanding foam. Shape it and then fiberglass over that. What a complete disaster. I am including photos of that just for posterity sake. I decided to just shape the MDF and then coat it with fiberglass resin. It actually worked really well. Again, I have included pictures all the way to primer stage. Used 3 coats of primer and 3 coats of gloss black.

More pics of the bezel

On the left is an IR receiver for my TV tuner card remote. The hole in the middle is for my power and video cable for the display. The square hole on the right is for my Logitech wireless gamepad receiver. Finally the big square hole below is for the DVD/CDRW slot load. The patches you see under the "arms" are T-nuts that hold the bezel to the aluminum chasis.

After it was bondo'd, sanded, primed and painted I test fit it in the Scion. The last picture is the dirty bezel with the DVD. The wires won't be seen when the final install is complete

Finally to the stage I can test install it in the dash and fire it up for the first time. I wired the display backlight, touch controller and VGA-LVDS controller to run off a single molex connector. So there is only one power connector and the VGA cable to the display. Here are some pic's of the display powered and running. Sorry they are so dark, it was late and the light in the garage is right above the car

The bezel for the display still needs to be bondo'd, primed and painted but I can do that later...

Last of the update pictures.