Thread: 2006 MazdaSpeed 6 Audio Test Lab

I realized the error in my ways, I knew I was forgetting something. The area that I wanted to mount the computer in trunk was not quite as large as I had hoped. I forget to account for the length of connectors. Doh! Luckily I hadn't done any painting and with the help of MR table saw fixed it right up. Here is the slightly more compacted version, rough painted with some hammered texture paint to give it a more metallic look.

Since this is going to be mounted on a board that is mounted directly to the rear suspension stiffening bars, the hard drive has to be mounted some where else where vibrations won't kill it. So instead, the hard drive is going to be mounted to the bottom of the rear deck in the trunk. I routed the IDE cable right out the top of the case as if it were meant to go that way.

I have test hard drive I am using to pre-install all the hardware and software and I plan on tweaking it before it goes into the car. Once it's ready, I will use Norton Ghost to image the drive and move the image to my 250GB Seagate with all my music and such. I am just waiting on a few cables to extend my VGA and USB devices, and then this thing should go in the car within the next few weeks. Going on the chopping block later will be my M10000, M1ATX, Earthmate GPS, and Creative Live USB which doesn't seem to be soon enough.

Very nice!

Thanks The new PC is in but the wiring isn't very pretty yet. As soon as I fix it up better I will post some more pics. I am waiting on the car2pc adapter too Custommmx3.

Ok, so now that the new computer has been in the car for a week or two, I finally had a couple hours to straighten out the wiring. It's still no where near "clean" but at least it's getting organized somewhat. I need to get two more barrier terminal strips for the speaker wiring. There is a whole crap load of speaker wire wrapped up at the moment as you can see in the pic. I have to wire up some relays to turn the speaker outputs off because my one amp is so old, that there is a slight turn on pop no matter what. So, the only way to rid myself of the pop is to turn the speaker outputs on AFTER the amp is on, and turn them off before the amp turns off. Yuk!




Here you can see where I decided to install the PC. Since I went with a microATX, it just wouldn't fit under the passenger seat anymore, not liek the ITX. Oh well, now I can show it off more at shows though . Right now you can see this big honking board across it, it's there to keep my sound card in place until I get some more metal mesh to use as the cover. So it's temporary. Also, the hard drive is mounted underneath the rear deck. I used rubber grommets to cushion the drive against bumps and it's in a removable 5.25" drive housing for easy removal if I need to add large files, or just back it up.

Also, the factory sub is still in there, but when I have time I am going to remove it and replace it with a ultra quiet 120MM fan to exchange air between the cabin and trunk for cooling, and warming purposes in the winter.

Very cool setup.

I've wanted to something similar to this since before I decided what kind of car I want (I'm only just 18, but I'm planning for when I actually have money).

I plan on putting a majority of it in the glove box, leave a bit of room for registration and such but other than that I never use it, so I'll put it in there to be closer to everything else. In the Mitsubishi Eclipses, there are buttons behind the steering wheel (on the back side) to control the music, I want to cut up a mini USB keyboard and stick buttons in the back to control like that, plus a touchscreen in the dash like yours. I want to completely replace the in-car control and go 100% computer though.

How feasible do you think it would be to put the computer in the glove box if I can get some sort of ventilation going in there?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/w...RCCODE=WEBWISH

That's what I'm thinking about for it, not 100% sure but that's what I saw when I looked through. Where'd you get your touchscreen?

Originally Posted by dmsuperman

How feasible do you think it would be to put the computer in the glove box if I can get some sort of ventilation going in there?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/w...RCCODE=WEBWISH

That's what I'm thinking about for it, not 100% sure but that's what I saw when I looked through. Where'd you get your touchscreen?

I have run nothing but carputer for my source unit for over 3 years, although a little help from some car audio gear for tuning. The integration of factory controls will make me very happy. THe touchscreen is cool, but it's a little high and hard to reach for safe operation sometimes. Plus, it's old and it is not transreflective so it's kind of hard to see during the day. I bought it on ebay when there were only two otpiosn back then, Xenarc or lilliput. There weren;t many dealers, so I got it on ebay for about $300. Now you can pick it up for $260 in the mp3car store or find one used int he classifieds for under $200. Although, you might want to save up and get the tranreflective if you want the screen to be useful during the day. Read up in these forums, soak in knowledge and plan. It will help you in the long run.

As far as that setup you posted, That very large and going ot be difficult to fit in a glove box. Heat will be an issue, and you will have alot of fan noise. Fan noise is amplified in a car vs the home. You'd be surpirsed how loud a typical processor fans sounds in a car. Also remember cars reach over 150deg depending on your area. Stick with the lower powered ITX systems or used a laptop if you want to do a glovebox install. That's just my opinion.

Hey there, Are you planning on using the delays built into Allocator or seperate ones?? I see everyone listing both Allocator and also Voxengo Delays in there setups, was wondering if the Allocator delay was not working correctly?

My Install starts this week, maybe tomorrow.. Hopefully functional within 10 days.

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