Thread: Ford F6 Tornado Project Log

And a few shots showing a mockup of internals, without gfx - front:





From the rear.....



And here with the GFX fitted, to show where it goes....



Temporary atx cable, modified to supply SATA-and Optical drive power - please take note all these will be replaced with a special ATX "flatcable" I will make up, as that was the reason for mounting the M2-ATX upside down - the 2 connectors are opposite each other, I was quite lucky here, so the ATX -cable will be approximately 3-4cm long.....



and my little gas blowtorch for doing the heatshrink - yes, even on a temp cable



Temporary power- and signal cables connected - as mentioned, don't worry about the mess for now, it will be sorted...


As mentioned, Hoojum did a great job on the design of this case, and components - here is a collection of the little DC Power mounting plates that fits to the rear lid - you mount your DC receptacle here, and bolt it to the backlid....

Again, this is a temporary one to accept the DC powerbrick I am using for setup, testing etc.....I will have an Industrial lockable unit that will go here when the unit goes into the car....here is a shot with the backlid fitted, without fan for now......



For those that wonder, here is a size comparison with an USB Skypephone - not to bad, double the hight, but close the the same dimensions as the Morex Cubid I was going to use earlier....



a Few shots from the front, with the lid fitted - I still need to fit the IR Filter to the left and above IO frontports, I have it, will go in during final assembly -





And here is a shot of the system running, WiFi Active, showing the Xenarc 700TSV which won't be used (for now) in this mod, and my Zippy aluminium keyboard, which may still be used....



Sorry for all the photos, but nowhere on the web could I find anything decent for this case, 1 review, but poor photos, so at least this should give people out there an idea if they consider this for CarPuter-, or HomeMedia/Entertainment system use.

Let me know what you think of the setup so far.

Kind regards,
Beanie.

Hello Everyone,
I know that you can use the ArcadeGFX in a Carputer to drive your ICC Color LCD, as the PC outputs VGA (31khz) and the screen needs CGA(15khz) video signal.

Now, I have managed to assemble a very decent Carputer, then decided to go another route with a ArcadeVGA GFX card, driving the standard Ford ICC Color LCD directly, as can be seen in posts above somewhere....

Now, last week I spent in Bangkok, and stumbled upon a very decent Apple Mac-mini setup, Core Duo (Yonah) processor, 1.86gig dual-core goodness, small, very small indeed, very powerful - and you can use bootcamp to install WinXP, so you can dualboot with Mac OS X.

Only problem is that you have standard VGA output (via DVI+A), but....maybe there is a solution: VGA-CGA Converter to drive the Ford Falcon's color lcd directly....

Should work very well, exactly what we need, and the unit is quite small. Hardware converter, no software needed. And ability to adjust screensize/position etc......

So, I will order one tonight, and test on my Mac-mini, and let you know how it goes.

Should be a decent solution to a big problem.

Djmicky/Long.1 - should be helpful to your cause Now you need to find space for a small Mac-mini, instead of a much larger normal carputer setup.

Br,
MrBean.

Hello Guys,
Ok, a small update - took me a while to do properly though....

As mentioned, one of my early objectives were to keep the fitting of the Carputer as factory-looking as possible, and with that idea in mind, I prepped the powercables this afternoon.

I am using 12gauge cables for the Carputer, even though the current-draw from the system would onle be totalling 10A max of my 12V rail, I would still like to over-engineer a little in this department, as I would not like undersized cabling giving me problems later.

With that in mind, I found a spare "plug" close to my brake master cylinder, allowing me a pass-through from the engine compartment into the passenger compartment.

Here you can see it next to the master cylinder....



And here is a shot from next to the brake-pedal (footwell) on the inside.....



It will be properly routed and secured on the inside with a proper power-distribution block, similar to the ones the audiophiles use to tap off power for their amps....

Here you can see how I routed the cables over the brakebooster, inside the split-loom - 10mm x 2m tubing obtained from Jaycar.



And a close-up of the same, using saddles and cableties to secure the split-loom.



Here is how I routed the split-loom/cables into the fusebox.......see where I mounted the earth wire.....properly soldered into the correct 12-gauge lug, and secured with a bolt to the vehicle chassis - I checked resistance from this point to the std vehicle earth points, as well as to the battery negative, and the resistance is 0.1 ohms - good quality grounding



Here is another angle of the wiring, and the circles would indicate where the positive would be connected to - I will check my w/shhop manuals to see which of the 2 points are the best, but both seems to originate directly from the battery + pole. I may use the one with the least current-drain on based on info in the manuals.



Here is a last shot, showing with the water reservoir bolted down again, and the fusebox lid secured - you can hardly see that there is 2 new beefy 12-gauge cables running into the cabin.....



And in this area here is where the Carputer will be located - I will start fitting in the week after work hours



Can hardly wait.

Will keep you guys posted.

Hey Micky,
Thanx for the feedback

I used this location, as the silly mech at Ford routed a cable for the alarm system through that rubber-grommet, not even sleeved or anything - just the bare cable

Bad workmanship, Ford!!

Anyway, now that cable is running within the split-loom too, so it looks a bit neater, and will prevent eventual damage to that bare cable.

Will be fitting the carnetix powersupply, as well as the vga-cga converter today. Took a day off......

Will keep you posted.