Laptop in yer car

Finglas Incubus

Any advice on where one might pick up an invertor which changes a DC signal to an AC signal? I want to experiment with mounting a laptop in me car so as I can have some MP3z on the move. The biggest stumbling block is getting the power sorted out.

Ta

Fing

Gerry

Maplin Electronics on Jervis st have invertors, however it would just be much better to find a transformer that will give the right voltage for your laptop, from the 12v car battery, as it does run on dc.

Blitzkrieger

or you could buy a Linux based car-stereo that plays MP3s. Prolly safer than having a lap-top in your car.

ButcherOfNog

car stero's that play mp3's, tell me more, as i was cosidering building my own

do they exist?

Finglas Incubus

Butch, check out http://www.mp3car.com for all the info.

Fing

Vexorg

Check out

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1325&p=1

and

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2000q3/cdcmp3/

and

http://www.aiwa.com/Catalog00/Products2.asp?id=94

Cool or what ...

Finglas Incubus

That Aiwa CDC-MP3 looks the mutts nuts.
I'm seriously considering this rather than the laptop idea (even though it'll cost me more, but hey..). All we need know is for one of these things to read DVD-RAM...

Fing

Jaden

MP3 player in car?

I have managed to do this, albeit in a strange manner.

I have a stripped down P100 in the boot, with 32 megs of RAM, and a 6.4 gig h/d, soundcard, and ethernet card. This is controlled via VNC from a 486 - 33MHz laptop built into the glove compartment. The network card on the PC in the boot is how I upload MP3s from my PC in the house.

I got power converters from bits lying about work. WORD OF WARNING: I lost a few bits and pieces using unregulated supplies. You'd be suprised how much juice is packd into yer little laptop when it's wired into the main lights circuit, just as you turn the car over.

I'm currently ungrading the whole thing to use just one PC (a 133MHZ), and a 1/4 size VGA screen (quite easy to get yer hands on). There is some messing about to be done with an old 2 meg Virge graphics card to get it working, but I should get it sorted soon. The main advantage with this new system is that it should be voice controlled, via a mike on the soundcard.

Incidently, I use Win98 as an OS, which is a bit of a pain in the hole, but hey, it works fine. When you strip the ****e out of it, it's actually quite fast. God bless:

www.98lite.net

---

Hail To The King, Baby.

Jaden.

Canaboid

Why not just buy one of them MP3 discman things for £140 quid and use that cassette jack converter thingie (I think thats what theyre called) to plug into existing tape player.

Hobbes

Creative Labs have a nice MP3 Walkman, just wire that up. Has 6GB of space on it and is the size of a walkman.

Keeks

This is quite a good site for a custom mp3 player in a car.
http://utter.chaos.org.uk/~altman/mp3mobile/
It require a decent knowledge of a soldering iron though and C programming.

Blitzkrieger

****ing hell, Jaden!

talk about over-complicating things

When you come to sell your car is there going to be like big holes in the seats and glove box and wires all over the place?

Finglas Incubus

Jaden, how did you manage to get power to your machines; DC-DC or DC-AC?

Hobbes the Jukebox might be an option, seeing as I work for CL

Jaden

I would like to point out that no peugeots were harmed during the making of this MP3 player.

The laptop used a DC-DC convertor, via a messed-about-with cigarette lighter adapter power lead.

The PC was firstly powered from a true 230 step up supply I had built in 2nd year in college, but this was hopelessly inefficent. (However, I had mains in my car, which comes in handy from time to time.) The PC was near it's working current limit, so I took it out, and went for something different. I bypassed the power supply on the PC, and ran it directly from a +12 +5 -5 -12 off the shelf supply. It took some mucking about with input balance, but I got there in the end. It's a far better solution. Incidently, from my new book, "Things I didn't know about motherboards, but know now", 1) Motherboards don't like power spikes ala starting your car. 2) There are alot of connections on some motherboards to their power supply, particularly for things like standby. It's rarely a case of supply power and off you go.

---

Hail To The King, Baby.

Jaden.

topgold

http://www.empeg.com/ is cool. I saw one wired to a Boomvan in South San Francisco and it blasted out the side windows of the van. Recommended.

I have a Rome cassette tape that plugs into my Rio and lets my Rio play through the car's sound system. It's tough on the Rio's batteries though.

/Bernie Goldbach in Dublin

marauder

Another one http://www.maximumpc.com/route66/howto1_3.html

He suggests using a wirless networking kit so that you can download songs from the comfort of your own home....

amp

Jesus Finglas I could kiss you, I got a link off that mp3car site to Evation what do sell the remote control jobby I've been trying to piece together all fupping year.

Nice one.

---

Lunacy Abounds! Play GLminesweeper!

Finglas Incubus

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Finglas Incubus:
That Aiwa CDC-MP3 looks the mutts nuts.
I'm seriously considering this rather than the laptop idea</font>

Scrap the Aiwa, this Neo 35 is the way to go:

http://www.ssiamerica.com/ecom/itmidx2.htm

Its basically a removable hard that fits into a bay in your car as well as your PC for hastle free uploading.Comes with a built in LCD and can handle up to a 60Gb IDE drive.
Nice...



[This message has been edited by Finglas Incubus (edited 04-01-2001).]

_CreeD_

Go with canaboid's suggestion. Pickup the Philips Expanium from Richersounds for 200 quid. Plays all bit rates (including VBR) and CDR/CDRw types. You get a Tape-convertor and car-lighter power kit in the box. The sound is pretty damn good for a walkman.