Car AudioCar audio related questions and helpful hints for building the best sound system for your car or getting the most out of what you have.
Welcome to ThirdGen.org!
Welcome to ThirdGen.org.
You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our community, at no cost, you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is free, fast and simple, join the ThirdGen.org community today!
Anybody know of a hard drive ONLY stereo? No CD player, no cassette player, no AM/FM tuner. JUST a hard drive player so I can load it with my MP3s. First thing I do when I get a new CD, is rip them into MP3s.
I'd love to have ALL my music on-board, with no discs to shuffle through.
I don't know of one off the top of my head, BUT I have the Alpine iDA-X001 which doesn't have a CD player, but it does have AM/FM. This unit connects directly to just about any MP3 player (except the Zune), or hard drive/flash drive. That way you can load all of your music onto something like that, and use the head unit to search and play back your music without having to carry CD's. http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/prod...model=iDA-X001
I don't know of one off the top of my head, BUT I have the Alpine iDA-X001 which doesn't have a CD player, but it does have AM/FM. This unit connects directly to just about any MP3 player (except the Zune), or hard drive/flash drive. That way you can load all of your music onto something like that, and use the head unit to search and play back your music without having to carry CD's. http://www.alpine-usa.com/US-en/prod...model=iDA-X001
I figured AM/FM & external drive, might be as close as I could get. Unless I could find a 7" touch screen, to use as a monitor, then mount a laptop under a seat, to use as my stereo.
But, I know my wallet won't allow much....right now. Things are looking up, and will be gaining steam quickly starting in March!
I was thinking about doing this when i'm to that point on my Z. In a stripped down form, all you would need is a 4 channel amp, speakers, and a long RCA to 1/8" phono to plug your iPod or other MP3 player to. Not only is it stealthy, depending on how you mount the amp, but you take all your music with you when you get out of the car. I'm pretty sure that's the way i want to go with this car.
i got an eclipse CD 8445 audio CD player, flip down face, but it has a memeoy stick slot in it that you can silde a memory card in, i seen memory cards that fit in it is sizes over 4 gigs. i got it in late 2006, it was $500
there also modules for usb for radios already on the market , i got the cd-ub100 from pioneer on my radio and works very good i believe u can get a usb hdd and used too if formatted with fat 32 .
there also modules for usb for radios already on the market , i got the cd-ub100 from pioneer on my radio and works very good i believe u can get a usb hdd and used too if formatted with fat 32 .
That's easy to do, but has everything I DON'T want. AM/FM tuner.CD/cassette player.
Looks like I'd hafta "build my own" with a laptop and a small screen. Maybe a console mounted trackball for navigation through everything.
I think I know what you are talking about, a removable rack mount harddrive with a built in MP3 player and a small LCD display on the front of the panel. You could remove the drive from the head unit in the car and slide it into the removable bay you would have installed in your computer.
I haven't seen these around for a long time. I really wanted one when I was younger.
Probably best to go with a car computer at this point.
But... There is one up on ebay right now ($238) [I'm not sure that this model will slide into a removable bay in your computer, it's a little different than the ones I saw growing up)
Try Clarion, I know that they have some pretty good stuff and they might even have what you want.
I just got the new Clarion HU and installed it in my car. No CD, instead uses SD cards to load music. Built in Bluetooth is pretty nice to have too. The only downfall is the FM tuner is WEAK. I think i'm actually going to send it back b/c it fades in and out of stereo so badly. My stock radio pulled the stations better than that. Blaupunkt offers a similar HU with SD card slot instead of CD. www.crutchfield.com will show all of them.
If you put a normal laptop in your car you'll probably eat the hard disk going over bumps. If you suspend it right there may be a chance. My past experience is that hard disks which have to spin all of the time just don't last all that long (a couple years) in cars and the laptop ones are worse.
If you put a normal laptop in your car you'll probably eat the hard disk going over bumps. If you suspend it right there may be a chance. My past experience is that hard disks which have to spin all of the time just don't last all that long (a couple years) in cars and the laptop ones are worse.
hard drives don't have to spin all the time only when your accessing it so if you do do this you'll need some form of cache thats how an iPod works it stores songs in its cache, if you flow through your song list quick you can hear the hard drive kick in. whereas just listening to songs its turned off, saves power and your hd
If you put a normal laptop in your car you'll probably eat the hard disk going over bumps. If you suspend it right there may be a chance. My past experience is that hard disks which have to spin all of the time just don't last all that long (a couple years) in cars and the laptop ones are worse.
Western Digital makes drives that are designed for RAID arrays w/ a 5 year replacement warranty vs their standard 3 year warranty. The RAID version drives are only a few dollars more than the standard units.
Also working in IT, I've had to return a few drives and Western Digital has had the best RMA return system. (You can put down a deposit with a credit card, and they will cross-ship a new drive to you)
I live on the west coast so I normally order hard drives from www.computergate.com (I have done business with them for over 6 years now)
for this type of setup a solid state type device would be best. look into the Via nano ITX mother boards, and go from there. Thats what I'm going to do, mount a touch screen, boot a linux OS from a flash drive, and just use a 4-8GB jumpdrive for music. I also know of a way to make a windows live CD (a working install on a CD that dosent need a HDD) I'll probably load that up with a data logger and have an in-car diagnostic system on the fly
Looks like AC power only. Sure, I could run a AC-DC converter, and that wouldn't bother me. What I'm suspecting though, is that the disc suspension would like in a car environment very well. Great for parked, such as shows, or stereo competitions, but not actual driving, over speed bumps, road seams, etc.
That's true but it would be a lot better solution than a laptop.
It's compact so you could pretty much mount it out of sight suspended in an enclosure to keep the "shock" down to a min.
It's the closest thing that I could find to a computer without actually having one and all the problems that come with it.
Plus you can unplug it and use it in the house.
With Divx movies only being around 700-800 Mb you can carry a whole library of music and movies in your hand. Car audio and Electronics is supposed to be installing one in a car in the next few issues. Waiting to see how they mount and power it.
Blaupunkt Melbourne is an SD card reader with no CD drive at all that I was considering. I like it's simple design.
Cool! Pretty much EXACTLY what I wanted! SD cards are small. Smaller than HDs, just can't store as much on them, but OH WELL!
Price is VERY reasonable too. If I could find one that took XD cards instead of SD cards.....I already have 3 XD cards. One of them is a 2 gig one! At MAX resolution, like 3000 x 2500, I can take 520 pics!640 x 480, it shows 9999 pics available. Even taking bunches of pics, I can't get it below the 9999!
Just looked it up....**DOES NOT FIT** Why not? I can understand needing the single DIN adapter being needed, but that would only...not a DIRECT fit...
About using a HDD... I had a old HDD in my car for about 20,000 miles. It never had a hickup. The main thing was I mounted it sideways and put vibration dampening mounts on it. I figure that the greatest shock would be from up and down movement, not side to side, so I mounted it so the read arm would be less likely to come in contact with the platters. I had it hit once or twice hard enough that the music stopped playing, I think the HDD was trying to recover it's spot.
I am actually still carrying that computer around in my car, I should hook it up and see if it still works.
I just put in a pioneer MVH-P8200bt, it has a plugin for my iPod classic which holds 120 GB of music. Plenty of room. I got an iPhone as well so the iPod doesn't ever move hardly, just when I want to add songs. It's great. I have been wanting to use a iPad as a head unit, would be great for nav and pandora radio
