The search is on for a new case
I"ve had a busy week and haven"t had much time to put the Car PC back together again. The first thing I"ve done is, as you can see below – drilled a number of holes in the current case to aid cooling, moved the HDD, fitted a fan and removed the padding inside so now the computer has much more room to "breathe". The internals now look like this:
The search for a better case continues, however and I"ve been looking on the web at this, from Casetronic.
Now, I can"t find anywhere that just sells the case. So that"s on hold for the moment – and it probably won"t take the Opus power supply, which I need eventually – as it has features to allow the PC to stay on when the car is cranking, and shut down automatically after a certain amount of time, and make sure the car battery doesn"t go too low. See Vauxhall Vectra Car PC website for more info, as he"s organising a group buy.
SO. I can"t keep the case I"ve got – because it"s not really the right material, and doesn"t look "sexy" enough, and isn"t grounded. I can"t get one of these casetronic cases, because they don"t seem to sell them on their own, and anyway – they probably won"t fit an Opus auto PSU. SO…. I still need to make my own. Well – I was out for a ciggie at work a few weeks back and saw in the skip one of those external drive cases, for SCSI drives and the like. Why I didn"t pick it upn then I don"t know – it was perfect. So I"m on the look out for another – and hopefully it will be like I remember – the right size, the right shape and built for computer equipment. We"ll see!!!
I"ve also been thinking of what I want from the system a little more. There are two choices – "KITT" style knight rider, or Bond car style. The bond car computer features are a little more modern, and also more realistic so that"s the direction I"ll be going in from now. Expect to see a missle launcher in my grille!!! No, seriously though I am thinking of putting a webcam behind there!!!
