ok first off iv been doin alot of googling about the hardware for the job. basically i want to build the main tower system under 300$. from what i have read when hooking up any motherboard to the 12vdc is the alternator current issues with damaging the pc. so the hardware i think should do the job is the vroom pc kit but not bought as the kit. most of the parts from the list. http://www.mini-box.com/VoomPC-2-Car-PC-Barebone-Intel?sc=8&category=101 Newegg has the motherboard in the list for 10$ cheaper. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121359 So ill go with that. i guess now what i wanna do is instead of putting a regular hdd i wanna go flash and boot off that. i havnt found hardly any info on if most of the motherboards support usb boot. kinda make the job pointless for what i wanna do. the space isnt an issue because its not goin to have videos or music stored on it prolly an 8gb really fast card should do.i really dont want to use usb for the flash boot if i can use a card reader thats built for the motherboard. external is for that. and also im tethering my omnia with it to browse the internet. its mostly goin to be used for internet and gps with the option of playing my whole music library and watching some videos. so i just want some feedback as to improve the general hardware and see what could work better. also looking for 10in monitor to use with it. thanks for any advice or help
Another option you might consider is finding an old laptop with a shot screen...these can be gotten for cheap off of craigs list. ...Or an even better option might be to buy a netbook. The cheaper 10" screen models are $300.
Im a bit confused, first you say HDD space is not an issue as you wont be playing music or videos, then you say you will be playing back video and music. Its rather hard to understand what exactly you want to accomplish,but generally KillerBug has the right idea. As for booting from a USB Flash Drive, sure you can boot off, say an 8 GB flash drive if you want to run ubuntu, and probably other linux flavors as well, but your not going to boot windows off a flash drive to the best of my knowledge.
well i have a external hdd for the music and videos. mostly i dont want any moving parts in the system. u can boot windows off of a flash drive just fine. a netbook does get the job don but i want to be able to add extra stuff later if needed. that case in the link will fit most if not all the mini itx motherboards so upgrading wont be expensive or hard. they make some pretty nice ones that do alot of stuff. plus xp stripped down like a version i got will do the job. runs descent on a 98 system that was not meant for xp.
A physical hard drive is strongly ill-advised in a car PC. Aren't you the guy that posted this at Hexus? haha
haha. actually not. this is the first time i have posted about my project. about the external hdd in the car. i use it all the time on my stereo. my stereo plays mp3 on usb. reads most of the music with a search function. pretty sweet. doesnt read all 10k songs i have but oh well. seems like most of u guys would take a differ aproach to it but i like my project. just need more damn money now lol. might be a redundant project when its not really necessary cause i have a laptop already that can do all that shit but its too big for what i want. rollup keyboard and some sort of wireless mouse. still deciding on what i want. i guess i can ask another question since its in the topic. when i hook something up like my ipod that has a car charger and connect it to the aux port on my cd player. it creates a bunch of static sound like fm loosing reception. is there a ground loop or something i can fix?
Have you tested the adapter cable with any other devices? This would be the first step in diagnosing if the problem is in the head unit or in the ipod/ipod cable area. Also, you might be interested in this: http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/speicher/flexi-drive_s2s/index_en.html ; you can boot to it like any hard drive, but it uses cheap SDHC cards, so you can get away cheap if you only need a little bit of space. (I think 24GB is the minimum, but it may be even less)
if you don't want any moving parts, why not get one of the new flash memory hard drives and you can install that in the computer case. other than the cooling fans, no moving parts. but i agree getting a cheap netbook would probably be the easiest and cheapest method.
Sounds like an even better idea than my Flexi-Drive recomendation...SATA SSD's can be gotten for under $100...no moving parts and minimal contact points. Corsair even makes a relativly cheap SSD for $130 if you want something that will last.
killerbug that flexi drive is pretty cool! what a great idea...combining SD cards to make a single SSD drive. i wonder if it can use regular SD cards or only SDHC cards. i guess with regular SD cards the drive would probably be very slow...
Yeah, only SDHC, but 4GB cards are very cheap these days. Still, the prices on the smaller SSDs are low enough to make the sharkoon unit seem overpriced (it costs more than a 32GB SSD even before you buy the SDHC cards)
i didn't see a price on it, how much does it cost? yeah i mean now that i think about it, it is somewhat useless with the introduction of SSDs, but nonetheless it is a cool idea. it would be nice if it could use a variety of cards so you could just plug all your old media cards you don't use and combine them into one drive, although it would be pretty slow. i guess the only advantage is that I'm sure the SDHC cards will be increasing in size, so it would be rather inexpensive to upgrade the storage space of the drive in the future. other than that advantage a SSD is better. how much does the drive that takes the SDHC cards cost?
^I doubt the drive will be able to support more storage then it already offers as the SDHC cards will probably incorporate changes that will eventually make them no longer function on this device.
I think the drive sells for 96 pounds, about 50% more than a 32GB SSD. The maximum capacity would be 192GB, and between the adapter and the 6 32GB cards, it would cost almost as much as a 256GB SSD. It was a great idea a year ago, but SSD prices have been dropping very fast lately.
