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Kibble's Kar Komputer Konstruction

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kibble

kibble

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I'm posting this just to show something else I've been working on for a while now. It's my car-pc. I had to make another one because I fried the mobo from the one I was originally working on. :-(

I'll have to split this up into two posts to fit everything.

Here's most of the stuff I'm using in my system: The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, M4 ATX power suppy, a Polstar GPS receiver I removed from a Parallax GPS module and soldered to a board I made with a power injector for an external antenna, a 80GB 7200RPM SATA II hd, and a nVidia geforce 7300GS card that I may or may not use, depending on how the system behaves with the built in ATI 780g chipset.



A couple of pics of the case I made. It's not complete yet, I still need to file down some of the corners where I welded the angle aluminum that I made the frame from and make some panels to cover the sides. the tray that the mobo sits in is also made out of aluminum that I bent to size on a brake. I drilled and tapped the holes for the mobo standoffs.




A couple of pics of the rear and front of the case.




A couple of pics of what it looks like mounted in the trunk. No, that sub above the PC doesn't affect it at all. I keep getting comments from people about that.




The heatsink for my processor, an AM2 Athlon 64 X2 5600, is a Dynatron A48G 1U Server Heatsink that measures a little less than 3cm tall, including the fan!




For a monitor, I'm using a 15" NEC monitor that I modified to make a touchscreen. I removed the touch panel and touch controller from another 15" monitor that didn't power on and was a bit bulkier. I had to drill and tap a couple of holes to be able to mount the touch controller to the new monitor.




The controller uses 5V and an RS232 serial port for data communications. I poked around with my multimeter to try to find a point on the LCD controller board that would output a switched 5V that would only be available when the monitor was powered on. I found one.




The old monitor that the touch controller came out of had a 9 pin D-sub port for the serial connection to the touch controller. Conveniently enough, the monitor I mounted the controller on has a 9 pin mini DIN connector on it. I wasn't planning on using serial data, though, to connect it to the computer. I wanted to adapt it to USB. What I did was buy a serial to USB adapter and take it apart so I could just use the board. I soldered some wires with an IDC connector on one end to plug into the touch controller and soldered 4 wires to the USB side. Then I covered the whole assembly in heatshrink to protect it.


 
kibble

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I removed some resistors and capacitors going to the 9 pin mini DIN connector that were used to interface the connector to the onboard microcontroller for the LCD, I wasn't gonna use that connector for it's original purpose anyway, it used to go to some external box that was useless to me. I soldered the USB data lines from the adapter to the pads leading to the connector where I removed the resistors and capacitors from.





I had to modify and cut the monitor enclosure a bit so that the whole assembly with the touch panel would fit in nicely, but it looks pretty good! Still working on a mount for the monitor which I'm almost done with. When I have that done, I'll have more pics.
 
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kibble

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Mobo: $95
Processor: $125
Ram: part free, part $40
Heatsink: $25
Power supply: $115, I finally gave in and bought one because I had way too much left to do with the one's I was originally building.
7300GS: Bought from a friend for like $20.
Angle aluminum: about $6.
Hard Drive: Free
15" Monitor I'm using: Free
Bad 15" touch Monitor: Free
Serial to USB adapter: $18
GPS module $80 :censored: expensive for something no bigger than a quarter!

So about almost $600 invested in it with things I haven't taken into consideration. Hope I don't kill this one.
 
Magice

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I actually plan on doing a carputer too. Real slick setup you got going there. What kinda car are you putting this in? How did you go about setting up your speakers to it (if you did)
 
kibble

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This is going in my '01 Infiniti I30.

I haven't done anything speaker wise, but I will later on. Right now I'm using the stock deck with stock speakers and amps, which sound good as they are. The audio input is.... wait for it.... A TAPE ADAPTER!!!! I'm running a 25' headphone extension from the output of the mobo to the front by where the deck is. Ghetto, yes, I know.

:roflol:

I'll eventually replace it with an aftermarket deck and I plan on getting a Memphis 16-MCH1300 (Memphis Belle) amp to power all the speakers and subs, which I have yet to buy. I had my memphis subs, a couple of M3 12's stolen several weeks ago :( along with an MTX 2300X Amp and a cheap crossover. Right now I had to resort to using the stock 8" stock Bose sub that came with the car to get decent bass from music.

What I'll be doing is running a set of RCA's from the mobo out to the deck input for audio, eventually.
 
ed1380

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very nice. you could have gotten an onstar module and taken the gps module out of it. would have saved about $30 bucks.
lucky me found one for free :bannana:

does it work yet?

what processor?

$115 for a psu? what were you smoking when you bought it?
 
Magice

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Wow, motherboards have come a long way!

Anyways $115 for a psu is pretty average, even for a lower wattage one. Fanless / silent+cool quality psus will run high in price..

but when your 30 dollar walmart special starts acting up you'll wish you bought quality :p
 
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Kenny_McCormic

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Magice said:
Wow, motherboards have come a long way!

Anyways $115 for a psu is pretty average, even for a lower wattage one. Fanless / silent+cool quality psus will run high in price..

but when your 30 dollar walmart special starts acting up you'll wish you bought quality :p
Click to expand...

If you know what your doing you can get any semiconductor you want for FREE, build a PSU.
 
kibble

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ed1380 said:
does it work yet?

what processor?

$115 for a psu? what were you smoking when you bought it?
Click to expand...

Yes, it works, It's in my car right now. I'm using it to listen to music, I hate CD's, I always mess them up.

I'm going on vacation next week and we're gonna go to San Francisco with my gf so I plan on using it for GPS and music. I want to get the monitor mounted by next Wednesday.

It's an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600 2.9Ghz Dual Core.

It's not a regular PSU, it's made for car use. It's really small for the amount of power it puts out, plus it's programmable and has different operating modes. It'll turn on and shutdown the pc automatically so I don't have to.

Kenny_McCormic said:
If you know what your doing you can get any semiconductor you want for FREE, build a PSU.
Click to expand...

I was originally making my own power supply for it, but I don't have the stuff to make it an "intelligent" power supply like the one I actually bought for it. The power supply has an "ignition" contact and it sends an "on" pulse to the motherboard when the ignition line goes high. I have the pc set to hibernate when power button is pressed, so when I turn off the car, the power supply pulses the power again and it makes the computer go into hibernate.

Magice said:
Wow, motherboards have come a long way!

Anyways $115 for a psu is pretty average, even for a lower wattage one. Fanless / silent+cool quality psus will run high in price..

but when your 30 dollar walmart special starts acting up you'll wish you bought quality :p
Click to expand...

It's a 250W PSU, but it's specifically made for mobile use. I don't need an inverter as it takes an input from 6-30VDC and converts it directly to the required voltages for the motherboard.
 
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oscaryu1

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picoPSU right?

And as most geeks say...

"You're better off with an Intel build" :D
 
kibble

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No, not a picoPSU, it's an "M4-ATX" from Mini-box.

Ugh, no intel! I had too many power timing issues with the first one and not only that, but it used more power for inferior performance, even though it was a dual-core. This one screams with a little less clock speed and I have no issues with power timings.
 
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