a few years back, there was a guy on a VW forum that had an alpine head unit that was a NAV style/touch screen that had a 6 or 7 inch screen. this HU also came with a HDD. and he had the HDD mounted below the HU. i cant seem to find any thing about it. anyone know anything about these??


edit: and IIRC it also had a nav system built in. i remember him talking about splicing into the VSS to wire it up.

 

anyone???

 

can't seem to find anything in alpine's current catalogs, so it looks like you're gonna be stuck searching the car audio forums or ebay. if you're set on having a hard drive, you can always get a USB-equipped model and use an external. I've also seen quite a few of the double dins with sd card slots too

 

not really too set on having a hard drive. just a nice feature i guess. thanks for the reply. i also thought about building a "carputer" does anyone know if it can be linked directly to the ecm for data streams and tuning?? im planning to do an LS1/T56 swap.

 

i know when you build a carputer you can hook into the OBDII and they don't work with OBDI (82-92 fbody's) at least when i was looking into them

I haven't seen a head unit that does that. But once again i didn't look into that to much on head units, and it was a while back.

But i can almost certainly say a head unit that does that is going to be upwards of 1000, Which makes a carputer seem budget friendly.

 

Most manufacturers stopped making units with hard drives approximately 2-2.5 years ago. I personally like them too, have you ever seen the Pioneer Z3? It's a sick unit. Instead they are making units now with more options built in and deleting the hdd feature to make them more affordable. You can find some really nice navs/head units now like the Kenwood, Pioneer, and Alpine.

 

Car computers are cool too. I haven't seen one that can be connected with the ECM, but I'm sure it can be done. I have experience with them and have installed a few and you can do it for the same cost as buying a navigation unit. If you have questions let me know and I can help you out.

 

cool thanks ive been considering building a carputer for a little bit but i dont know if i will need all of the features. (i guess you can never have too many) one of the problems is i dont even know where to start.... is it like building a regular pc? i have a little bit of experience building desktops. and can you still have features like AM/FM radio, cd changers, ipod interface, ect. because i still want to have all of the features of a regular HU, and if i could learn how to tune i think being able to do it in the car would be awesome.

 

i had a carputer a while back, looking to build another one over the next couple years. prices and sizes have come down a lot (pico-itx comes to mind) while increasing processing power and features keep increasing. Lucked out that I've got a 4th gen dash and a big open spot on the passenger side where the airbag was.

a car pc can get quite involved, but determine what you want and go from there. easiest route would be to stick with a headunit to keep the am/fm tuning and processing (crossover, eq, etc) and just input the pc's audio into the deck as an aux. set up an lcd touchscreen monitor elsewhere.

or you could get 4+ channel soundcard and get software plug-ins to route the audio to various outputs, get a fm/am tuner card, and eliminate the headunit completely.

a usb odb1/2 scanner should be easy to work into the setup, but viewing little data cells could be bothersome on a small monitor.

 

ok i see. do you know any sites where i could check out stuff for them?? any sites out there like newegg.com or tigerdirect.com have stuff for them? im kinda interested.

 

Have you looked around mp3car.com? Seems to be the goto place. The thirdgen.org of carputers

 

ill check that out thanks.

 

WTF! I just posted a picture of my Kenwood KVT-717 DVD flip out head-unit with the 7" LCD touch screen in the whole "weirdest thing you've found in your car" thread. Then, I clicked new posts and saw this!

Dude, I'd have no clue where you could get one, but I have one. I bought an '01 Mustang GT yesterday, and it came with it.



EDIT: Oh yeah, mine has an option for navigation, too. I just wouldn't know how to wire it up.

 

Probably just an optional kenwood module that plugs in the back of the deck? like they do with bluetooth and such on kenwoods/pioneers

 

those are cool but i dont like the flip out style. i like the regular touch screen ones that sit flush in the dash.

 

I'm not sure if a flush mount screen that size would even work on my Mustang, let alone the Camaro's even smaller console area. Then again, I'm not really into audio/electronics, so I know next to nothing on the topic. At least I'll be leaving the interior and radio in the Mustang, unlike what I did with the Camaro, in the name of weight savings.





Now since I've accomplished owning both cars in the biggest car rivalry of all time, I should step it up to the big leagues. Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4 Vs. Ferrari 458 Italia! Time to start saving! LOL.

 

haha.... let me know how that works out for ya... and while ur at it ill send you my christmas list =). and back to topic i am planning on doing a 4th gen interior swap along with the LS1/T56. and from what i understand the 4th gen dash has a bigger radio hole. and if i doesnt i can always make a bigger one.