I've got a 500mhz g3 iMac slot-loading with 512 mb ram blah blah blah...
I've also got a 1991 4runner with some much needed modding

I'm going to take my iMac apart and mod it into my 4runner with a 7 inch LCD in the dashboard... I put a 7200rpm (80gb) hard drive in my iMac and I already know that it runs a bit hot. My question, where in the car would I put the CPU so it didn't overheat? I've been toying with the idea of glove box, trunk, back seat. If it's a hot day (here in texas we get quite a few), i could blow my iMac up if i wasn't careful. I plan to re-route some A/C to it depending on location and add more fans for keeping it cool.

After talking to my friend who I made the bet on this mod with (his next paycheck + 120 bucks if I do it), he doesn't seem to care. I am in dire need of creative advice. Someone help me.

You could fit it to the underside of the front seat, in smallish case with decent fans and filters to keep the dust and dirt out. if you mount it cleverly enough you can get ventalation on both sides of the main board. A lot of UK car audio people use this space to mount extra amps when thier running short of space in little 3 door hatchbacks, or they want to do a stealth install. If its mounted to the rails you still retain the sliding motion on the seats (just rember to allow enough cable movement)

Speaking of "mobile" iMacs, you know that handle they've got on the case? Well one day, my friend Michael saw some idiot carrying one around by that handle on the street like it was a laptop. :woohoo: LOL...

Where would I go about getting a case that I could put my iMac innards? I plan on having a 6" LCD in the dash that can fold away when necessary.Once I've got this case done, the rest will be a cakewalk (except having to buy extra junk). ;-)

It's going to be necessary to convert the design over to an ATX power supply and then change it over to use VGA before you can do that. It's quite a bit of work, but I would look into how you are going to get it to run an LCD w/o the CRT and analog board before deciding where to place it in the Toyota.

I have thought about this myself, and I say the glove box with an extra hose from the ac ducts running into it would be perfect. The glove box is about the right size as well, not to mention its ease of access.

Do the ATX power supply mod frist then wire everything before you install it in the case and test it out. Then go buy a power inverter and wire it up to the car. Now you can easyly have it all together and use a simple VGA extention cable or have everything hidden around the car. If I remember correctly the max length of a IDE cable is 18 to 24inches. So if you have room you can mount the CD-ROM and HD in the car's console where the CD player is located and have the logicboard located in the glove box with the power supply. I imagne you can mount the power inverter under the dash on the passenger side. Also since the logicboard is in the glove box you can easyly redirect the A/C vent to push air inside the glovebox. Also it would be a good idea to add on a heatsink. A PC Socket-A or even a Pentium4 heatsink will do the job if you mount it correctly. Since the LCD is thin you can easyly mount it on the car's cdplayer console.

This is what I would of done if I was going to do it. Ofcorse it was easy for me on my Car-PC mod, I just built a little desk out of SteelTech and mounted it on the passenger side in a angle and then spliced into my car's amp for the sound and spliced into my car's intena to the AirPort card. I've been playing with a 10inch touch LCD screen I pulled from a PAR Register but it uses a older PC 9pin Serial connection for the touch screen. It works when I use a adapter that turns it into PS\\2 but I don't know if it would work with a USB adapter.

I already knew I needed to convert it to ATX, and I've got a power supply to do it. As far as connecting to the LCD, I've found one that has a VGA connector and then I can extend it. TCPMeta, thanks for the ideas, I'll begin and hopefully finish my mod in the next few weeks with pictures soon.

If your going to do a car computer check out the various car dc -dc powersupplys as well, they have nifty stuff like capactors to allow the computer to survive a car start (car voltages drop to as low as 5v when you turn over the starter motor).
Personally if I was going to do a car mac I would investigate using an old ibook with cracked screen, because it has a battery onboard it will survive car power failure/interuption, and has built in output for composite video (which most cheap small dash mountable TFTs use).
Doesn't mean that you can't do it with the imac, and using an iMac means bigger discs are easier, but you could put a big disc in a firewire caddy with an ibook.

this is a good start for dc-dc car spesfic atx displays.
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.A/id.356/.f

i know there aren't many cold days in texas (i used to live in Beaumont the only snow i saw was in 1992) but if you ever have the heater on, you would be blowing the redirected air right onto the computer too. something to think about


macDeviant :woohoo: