Carputer 3.0

Quick review.

Carputer 1.0
Burnt out from the hot sun
Slow as heck and by time it loaded up OSx I was half way to work.

Carputer 2.0
Switched to a PC and worked quite well for a week
Hard drive kept crashing
LCD only worked when it wanted to
It was stolen the other day


I'm already planning on the new CPC 3.0. I want it to be a mac but it's hard to find a mac that will handle what I want. I'm going to cheap out and use a power inverter instead of a DC-DC power supply. My last two DC-DC power supples died from overheating and blowing a fuse every hour or use when in use. I want to ether install the system under the seat or in the dash. Heres pics of carputer 1.0 and 2.0.

carputer 2.0



carputer 1.0

I think overheating will be an issue no matter what computer you use. Maybe you should hack into the air intake and have it blow over the case

I always thought laptops were ideal for carputers. You can leave the battery in place which means you can leave it asleep since it won't draw much power.
Also they are designed to cool in a very small space. All you have to do is increase the space and you make a huge difference to the cooling. Just put it in a custom case.
You could duct air in from the front of the car for it. You'd need filters but its no big deal really. Add a couple extra small fans, and you can pull air in while you're parked without flattening the car battery.
A late TiBook would do the job quite nicely. Depending what you want to do with it. The DVI models should all run Leopard without too much work. We have a 450MHz Cube running it just fine.

You guys nailed it. I was gonna say, laptop and air intake...

Well the car has a center console that has air ducts. I can easily tap into them and also use Peltiers for the CPU and hard drive but have them wired to constant voltage so they're always on. The car is a daily driver so I don't have to worry about the battery dieing. I already have a kill switch to the battery for when I go out of town and stuff so my capacitor to my stereo doesn't eat the battery.

tcpmeta i thought your car was broken into? weren't you working on a carputer mod at the time?

How about one of these http://www.mini-itx.com/2007/06/02/via-epia-px-10000-pico-itx-review

wow, thats cool!

I was working on it. They kept dieing or crashing as a result. Since the logicboard from the sawtooth died from heat I tried to finish the install with the second system and it crashed from a bad power supply, crashed the hard drive and also in the middle of working on a inverter for the LCD so it would work right. With that long extension cable it was killing the video IE fuzzy and loss in color and at times wouldn't even see connection. Shortly after that the engine blew and been rebuilding the car since then. Also the last system was stolen so now I basically have to start all over.

I won't be starting on the new carputer right away, still have to finish the car and also finish a few other things from the last build like the inverter and also the sound system.

ExACtLY!

I would love to have a board like that but I love to be able to expand.

I would say a three fan system.

one on the front of the case taking air into the case one on the processor and one out the rear of the case to blow all of the hot air out of it.

If I had it my way I would re route the A/C line to the CPU and do some vapor cooling.