Carputer time!

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Sabz5150

FALCON PUNCH!!!
Buddy of mine snagged an older POS machine from an office store that went outta business. Free goodie, can't turn that down. The thing is TINY, which immediately turned me to carputer.

It's an OLD system, we're talking Pentium 200 here so I am treating it as an embedded system. Just need to trim the OS down to an extremely small level and optimize all the software running on it. It'll have no trouble playing mp3's, tuning in TV, connecting to the net and doing some wardriving. I have tracked down a hardware Divx decoder card that will take all the weight off the processor for playing video files.

My OS of choice is, of course, Linux. I am going to use lmbox as my frontend, which is fully themable and customizable. It also has the nifty ability to dispay the weather as well as news headlines along with all the usual stuff you'd expect from a multimedia system. I also have a Harmon-Kardon USB gadget that is basically a soundcard with a coaxial digital out as its only output. That's going straight into the digital side of my surround processor for DTS decoding.

Anywho, less talk more pics!

carpc1.jpg


carpc2.jpg


Tiny boxen.

carpc3.jpg


Testing out with DamnSmall to make sure it works.

carpc4.jpg


Lookin sharp! You'd never guess that's a P1.

Here are a few shots of the frontend I am going to use.

lmbox1.jpg


lmbox2.jpg


weather.jpg


news.jpg
 
sweet.

AT keyboard connection...holy crap. OLD SKOOL.



...or is it...maybe the perspective is just off. looks the same size as network connection...oh well.
 
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Why are you movies in russian?

My movies aren't in russian, those are screenshots of the program which I am going to use. It just happens to be made by a Russian.

Oh, and that's a good ol PS2 connection. I'll be using a wireless keyboard anywho so it doesn't matter too much.
 
You'll need a decent size inverter for that thing... Not to mention, check the HD... Might want to replace it with something larger. Either that, or because its an AOpen platform, remove it from the big bulky case if you don't care about the CD/Floppy, and just make a much thinner case, then buy a Carputer Power Supply. Then you could put it under a seat without a worry.

But a 200mhz Processor WILL get bogged doing any type of movie watching... Hardware decoder or not. I would also check if your decoder will support a 200Mhz processor.
 
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You'll need a decent size inverter for that thing... Not to mention, check the HD... Might want to replace it with something larger. Either that, or because its an AOpen platform, remove it from the big bulky case if you don't care about the CD/Floppy, and just make a much thinner case, then buy a Carputer Power Supply. Then you could put it under a seat without a worry.

But a 200mhz Processor WILL get bogged doing any type of movie watching... Hardware decoder or not. I would also check if your decoder will support a 200Mhz processor.

Inverter? No. I'm converting it to use an ATX DC-DC power supply. That's going to be easy as hell.

I stuffed a 3gb drive in there simply for testing. Once I am done, I expect the OS and the entire frontend to fit within less than 512 megs. Booting from CompactFlash is what will be the magic bullet against vibration. I'll have USB ports up front for iPods, thumbdrives and external HD cases. Planning on having a slot load drive up front too.

Video would be nice, but it is not a must. Managing my music, wireless connectivity for net access and maybe an emu or two. As with my sound system, the goal is to get the biggest bang for the absolute least buck.
 
How are you booting from CF with Linux on a 200mhz box?

And if video isn't a must, ditch the divx decoder, and put the flat board in its own tiny box. Hell, you could probably put it in a pizza box.
 
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How are you booting from CF with Linux on a 200mhz box?

Any system should be able to boot from CF with a CF-IDE adapter. The bios will see it as a normal drive, assigning cylinders, heads and sectors. Nothing special is needed for that. Linux will treat it as a normal drive.
 
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