I was pondering the idea of dis-assembling a PC and installing the components in my car. I could use a mobil 5" LCD monitor, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and make a shock-resistant mount for the hard drive and integrate it with my sound system. I could play MP3s, watch movies, and install a rear facing backup camera. I could also use it for security and other things. The limits would be endless.

Any comments or suggestions? I have the technology to do this, the question is should I?

 

sounds awsome, i was also pondering doing this, i would love to see your results if you did this.

 

my question is, how do convert the wall plug for the PC into something your cars battery can run ex.( ciggerette lighter, wire into fuse box, ect.) i have a playstation 2 im tring to wire up but the only problem i am running into is the power conversion. somone please help me out

 

use an inverter if you want, it takes DC power and inverts it to AC, it plugs into your cig lighter outlet, and then has a wall outlet for your AC devices, to make it more permanent, you could cut off the cig lighter end, and wire one end to ground, and one to a 12v. source with a switch, then you could turn it on and off, and you wouldnt have to have it pluggied into your cig adapter the whole time.

 

A PC as well as a Playstation are run by DC current, they both use an AC converter. The PC has a power supply inside that runs things at 12.7 volts, and a few things at 5 volts. It would not be hard to use a dropping resistor to drop down voltage to 5 volts.

The playstation on the other hand uses a AC adapter and converts to DC also, but I'm not sure off hand how many DC volts it runs off of. I think its either 4, 7 or 12. Again a dropping resistor or a small circuit will drop down the voltage.

Neither of these installs are rocket science... just a little knowledge of electronics.

 

Sounds awsome to me. Your right the, possibilitys are definitly endless. I say go for it.

 

If you look around you may be able to find a DC to DC converter that takes a wide range of input voltage, perhaps from 5 to 24 volts, and provides standard PC power supply outputs (-5, +5, 12 Volts DC). You could run the PC on this.

This would eliminate going from 12VDC to 120VAC then back to 5 & 12 Volts, so it would replace the inverter and PC power supply.

There are quite a few outfits making these DC to DC converter 'blocks', and they are generally quite reliable.

What voltage does the liquid crystal display run on?

 

I can make my own power supply no problem. The LCD would be a standard issue mobil setup for 12 volts.

 

I thought about this too.

I stopped when i realized that a PC needs +12V, +5V, +3.3V, -5V and -12V Lines.

Also you don't need to build any special mount for your Harddrive. Harddrives are designed to withstand up to 50-60G's or 50 to 60 times the force of gravity on the drive which is a hell of a lot more than it will ever experience in a car (unless you hit someone head-on, both going 200+ MPH, in which case you'd be dead, so there's no problem)

Still the idea is feasable (and has been done many times in the car audio industry). The main problem is "where". Where in these cars, which are already lacking space, would you put it?

 

i'd be willing to bet with some creative thinking, you could place this whole setup (computer part) under the pass side kick panel.....

Steve

 

1- how do you figure that the Hard drive isnt going to get wrecked, i guess if youve never seen one it would be an easy mistake to make, the hard drive has metal disks inside like records, then it has heads that read off the metal disks, if you bounce the drive while the disks are spinning, the head scratches the disk, and then that creates bad sectors.

2- ever think about that lock box on the driver side, or getting AAA and getting rid of the spare tire?

 

Actually I have seen, taken apart, and tested 1000's of different harddrives (20MB up to 300GB) and they all have the same basic construction.

You could take a harddrive, throw it against a brick wall as hard as you can and it will still work the same as it did before (believe me, I've already proven this)

If you are experiencing 50 - 60G's in your car,, your body would be a paste on the seat. No human body could withstand this force but Harddrives CAN.

If the disks and the head supports weren't solidly mounted to the drive casing then you might have problems, but since they are, there are no problems. Why don''t laptop drives end up with bad sectors, they are constructed the same way and are put through far worse treatment than being mounted in a car?

 

wow your a quickie, thats what i was trying to say, as long as the drive isnt running they are practically indestructable, but try throwing the hard drive against a wall while it is searching for data, or playing an MP3, and it WILL scratch the surface, and cause bad clusters on the disk, which will eventually lead to hard disk failure

 

ok, I just tried that, to a WD 425MB HD

Still works, no bad clusters, no data corruption, no problems whatsoever (except for a few paint chips but hey paint on a harddrive is pointless n-e-way.

Once again, I refer to the Laptop scenario, laptops are used in moving vehicles every day, the drive is mounted and constructed no differently than in a desktop PC. Why don't these drives experience failure - because, like all HD's, they can withstand the forces applied to them.

Yes, older drives are mre suseptable to damage, but new drives are built stronger, and more reliable.

People have been adding PC's to computers for years without problems and now you are trying to tell me that there will be problems.

The forces required to damage a harddrive physically are simply not present in everyday driving.

Every drive I've ever owned that cratered was due to controller failure (that PCB on the bottom of the drive), or from my brother placing magnets near them, never from physical abuse. I have heard of drives developing bad sectors, but only in old drives that are ready to die, or in poorly constructed drives like seagate, maxtor and other bottom end drives.

 

i can honestly say that i've never had a bad drive from it being moved... the only ones i ruined by bouncing while running were the old xt drives i used to screw around with .....

even with allt he road bumps and such, i doubt you would have a problem.

 

How on earth did you throw a harddrive against a wall, while it was spinning at 5400 or 7200 RPM's while searching for something? did you throw the whole PC?

 

Set the computer near a wall, and Throw. Not hard to do.

 

Ok guys, I see I opened up a can of worms here

Lets forget about the HD for a moment because I will mount it in a safe, shock free environment. Instead lets concentrate on what different uses the PC will be good for. I want to know if it would be worth while to do. That means it has to be cool and useful, not just some show piece, because thats the last thing I'm looking for is to impress other people. It needs to impress me first.

Thanks for all the feedback, but we're spinning our wheels so to speak. Lets get this topic off the ground so I can continue with my creative thinking

 

Mike,

what about a pc that boots off of a CD? If you have enough memory (>/=128MB) you could install a ramdisk for the swap-file. If you use 98lite you can make the OS so slick that it only leaves a small footprint and runs much more stable than Windoze usually does. If you don't like Windoze, like me, you could create a bootable CD with Linux or OS/2 (now called Ecomstation) on it. Configured correctly, these OSes usually have a smaller footprint than Win and they need less system resources.
You would just need an MP3-Player software to get the job done.
If you use CD RWs you can change the songs on the CD at home without having to burn new CDs again and again.
You could use the 1GHZ VIA C3 CPU, it just consumes 12 W of power and fits on Socket 370 boards. This CPU could probably be run with a passive cooler element due to less energy being wasted as heat.. It will definitely not drain your battery that fast like an Intel or AMD CPU will with its vast hunger for power somewhere in the 50 to 70 W range.
The MSI MS-6368 should be suitable. It also has onboard VGA, Sound and LAN. This saves money for the expansion cards needed on other boards, consumes less power and will produce less heat. Overhere it is only EUR 69,- and should be even cheaper in the US.
Click on the following link if you want to read about the C3:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020605/index.html

If you'd decide to do so you'd have the following advantages:
Less parts than in a regular pc -> Just Mobo,CPU,CD-Rom,Monitor and mouse/keybord.
No harddrive necessary
Less power consumption, extends battery life and produces less heat.
Hence no sophisticated and noisy cooling setup.
Needs less space.

The disadvantages would be:
No movies, or you would have to install a second CD-Rom to play them. OTOH watching movies on a 5'' display isn't that much fun, is it?
If you consider playing PC games, you almost probably won't be able to do so. Considering playing games on a 5'' display that should't provide too much fun either, right? Especially if it is a TFT display .

I thought about this setup myself but don't have the money right now to make it.
OTOH personally I' d just prefer to play music and there are MP3-capable CD-Radios available between EUR 120,- and 600,-, depending on the brand.

Have fun!!

Andreas

 

Cool and Useful you say?

Well the PC lends itself to data acquisition pretty well, if you were a racer and had accelerometers and strain guages on the suspension members you could learn heaps about what's going on as you race around a track.

Similarly, you could log a lot of data regarding the engine's temperature, throttle position, manifold vacuum, injector pulse width etc. Really useful if you were burning your own PROMs or wanted to build your own EFI setup.

But as far as daily street use... MP3 player? That's all I can think of. Maybe your passenger friends like playing with spreadsheets?

 

As just an MP3 player - can you name a car MP3 player that offers up to 1TB (terabyte or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 4 - 250GB HD), or more of storage for under $2500, I think not. 1TB is approx 17,000 hours of music @ 128kbps

With the proper set-up a PC can be more usefull than just an MP3 player.

1. Get a cellular modem - Net access
2. With an active matrix screen - Games and movies for passengers on those long tripps
3. Quick access to databanks for addresses, phone numbers, etc.
4. No need to go home when your digital camera is full, just download to the car PC and tranfer later
5. Put a CD/CDRW/DVD drive where the deck is normally and you can play VCDs/DVDs, friends audio CD's, and burn your tracks onto CD when you hit that party friday.

 

I have personally had a perfectly good laptop hard disk destroyed by nothing more than a 3 foot fall.

I would use some sort of damped mounting for the hard drive, and anything else 'delicate' as well. Even if a shock wouldn't be a threat to the drive, the vibrations present would put a lot of extra stress on bearings and such; things will fail sooner.

As far as the power supply goes, just keep in mind that your motherboard probably wants the voltages regulated a bit better than the 12-14 of volts the car's electrical system. I would definitely use a regulator.

I didn't see maps listed in the list of uses for an onboard PC - load up a road atlas and your all set for those cross country trips.

It would also be really cool just to have readouts from the cars computer going - especially if you whipped up a custom display program with some cool graphic effects.

 

I am a certified computer repair technician many times over. I am also a Toshiba Certified laptop technican. I have worked at many service centers doing work on them and I can tell you that you are DEAD WRONG!

Hard drive stand more force than anyone would imagine they could stand. I have seen the ratings on serveral drives being only 8gs'.

Besides that minior point I can tell you that laptops do in fact get bad sectors on their drives. The number *1* part that gets replaced on laptops is *HARDDRIVES*. 10-1 Vs. desktops. Why is this? Are laptops drives not as strong as desktop drives? Hell no they are stronger in terms of shock resitance. Laptops drives have less platters than a regular drive does. The key is all the jumbling and motion.

Having said that. Under normal operations a laptop hard drive will stand up to driving in a car. The only time I would imagine failures is if he were to get into an accident. If you get into an accident that will buckle metal panels and the frame, shattering glass or whatever. I can guarantee that a hard drive will take a dump.

Whenever data is accessed from the hard disk the arms move accross the platter reading the data. If at the outer edge especially of the drive a sudden shock occurs there is a increased chance of the actuator arm coliding with the platter. In fact I have pictures of such an event where this occured.

This pic came from a drive that was in a desktop that was knocked off a retards desk while being defragged.

My only point in this is that although he can put a computer in a car, In fact I too have thought of it, drive reliability may be a problem. I am not trying to be an ***. I am just pointing out that hard drives are not typically used when people are in motion, walking or driving. When drives are idle they can stand a beating. Also I assure you that if you did such a thing in an off road vehicle the drive would not last. Laptops aren't meant to be used while you are walking or running. They are meant to be used in a stationary position. It just that you can move it easier. Carry it in your breifcase or bag if you need to have a PC with you all the time.

I am just stating this based on my observations with computers and notebooks in general.

 

Hey everyone. This is my first time posting in the electronics section. Ive built a car computer. Im in the process of re-doing it though, due to design errors. There are ways of making the HD safer. Notice I said safer. There is still a chance of wrecking it. Anyway...if you want to make something neat for it, you can hang it vertically, and use springs with guides to give it a small suspension set up. Thats what Im working on now. Should allow for some movement, but wont let it go up and down like a pogo stick. Also...Im not sure if anyone mentioned this, but there is a very good site for this sort of thing. mp3car.com. Everything you need to know about building a car computer out of a pc. You can email a guy and he will send you instructions on building a power supply that stays on when you turn off your ignition, and after a certain amount of time, will properly shut down your system, or be ready on standby if you hop back in your car again...so you dont have to restart the comp every few minutes. Lots of good info. Have fun! Its nice to have 3000 songs on tap in the car. Just dont let that LCD put you in a trance...


Justin

 

Seagate used to make the moutning points on the drive seperate from the casing. They had rubber bushings between the mounts and the drive itself to help absorb energy. This was a smart design. Utlimately I think Seagate stopped doing it due to cost and lack of necessity. I have thought that if I were going to do a mobile computer in a car that I would duplicate this design in any sort of mount I made.

I have also considered a liquid or gel mount. Similar to liquid motor mounts designed for cars. (I don't know if any production cars actually use this design.)

Feel free to ask if you need any help working on something like this. I live no where near your area but I might be able to give you some ideas if needed. If I can find a pic of those drive mounts I'll post it.

 

A friend of mine put a computer in his '86 cutlas oldsmobile. He even put in a full sized monitor in the back seat...too bad a week later the car caught fire and was completely burnt!!

The fire Department said it had to do with some wiring in the trunk!!

 

If you can post drive mount pics that'd be great. Im having some issues with my designs. Also, I believe Hyundai's use the liquid mounts. They are designed to help the motor roll back and under the car instead of pushing into the cabin...also I heard they drop the motor to the ground in case of a fire... My girlfriend has a new elantra and the dealership was explaining all this to me. Dont know how reliable they are tho... Anyway, let me know about the drive mounts as this is where Im stuck. Ill try to get pics posted of what ive done.

Justin

 

Yeah I wish I could find pics of that. All they did was they made 2 metal rails which you can use any case mounting rails that are seperate and attach to one side of the drive each, and a rubber bushing in between the rail and the drive. Liquid would be more complex. But if you had a gel like substance as your bushing instead of rubber it would absorb more energy.