StevieG's Car PC Blog

Well, I"ve finally got EVERYTHING I need to do the proper, final install. I raided B&Q and now have enough wood to make anything for the boot install and starting to feel old… I now have a workbench, bunch of power tools, hammer etc… It"s going to mean the missus wants some DIY done!
Karputer.co.uk sent me one of their "KCU" units, and this has made the testing phase easy (full review to come soon) but the final install will still be based around the Opus/Sony amplifier as I"ve decided not to use any of the original car audio system wiring. It does mean I do have the basic setup installed and working…

I"ve also been designing the wiring for the new setup, and started running the cabling. So at the moment I"m driving around with plastic panels removed, cabling on display everywhere, and the unfinished system uncovered (motherboard exposed!) in the boot. This did cause a little problem last night when we went shopping, and on arriving back at the car with the trolley I opened the boot to put the bag in.. and rememered that it would have to go on the back seats. Luckily my fioncee was quite understanding… I have no idea how she puts up with me!

As I said I have everything I need now.. and not just bits of wood. I"ve got a ton of cabling to do the final install, and (heres the big one) upgraded the basic Car PC hardware. I"ve swapped the motherboard for a Via Epia MII 12000 – which makes a MASSIVE difference, and used a faily new 120GB HDD that I had bought for my home file server a month or so ago as the main HDD. This web site itself is now running from the old hardware in the old case, running quietly from a shelf in my study … so if you see on the site the install in the silver serenti case… You are actually using that system RIGHT NOW. (You may need to be a total geek to find that at all cool, so if you have no idea what I mean… Don"t worry about it)

In other news… I popped down to W.H.Smith"s today, and picked up the latest copy of GigaHz magazine.. And was pleased to see I"m finally in it – Page 57 of Issue 4, so if you"ve came here after reading that… Welcome, hope you enjoy the site.

Next update will probably be in the nexxt day or two, as a temporary update to the build section so you can see in detail how well it"s going, and I"ll be publishing some of the "upcoming" articles a few people have told me they are waiting for. From then on it will be another week or two until I get the install completed and do a full write-up, as I have had a lot of requests for more pictures, more step-by-step detail and the build seperated into different sections, for all the different bits and bobs that make up the install.

The new install (see build v4 section) is coming along nicely – in the workshop. It"s paramount that whatever goes in the car has to be as quick and reliable as a basic head unit and offer a lot more features in addition to looking and sounding better. (Yes that"s right it needs the girlfriend seal of approval !) To ensure this I"ve got a lot of testing to do. As is true with most IT systems whatever the size, users (the missus) will lose confidence in it quickly if the production system is not working for one reason or another. So testing it and getting every part working the way I want it is the only answer… Although what I really want to do plonk it however in the boot of the car just to have a working system again.

Although the weekend is here again I"m not able to do as much as I"d like – I wanted to get the boot install underway – as it"s raining and I"ve got the flu . Not worries though as I"ve got somewhere (with the lilliput auto-on modification etc) and in addition to testing the software there is lots of other stuff to do, like measuring the cable runs to make the Car PC "wiring loom" – Once built I will be able to test the actual setup inside using the actual wiring before actually installing it in the Car.

Well my image hosting is back and I"ve re-organised my image hosting a bit. Thanks to the wonders of PHP I can point it to multiple locations, so should anything go wrong again it will be trivial. Hosting is such a pain in the ass when you have to rely on other people!

Ooops! It looks like the new idea of having links to ultra high resolution images of the Car PC components wasn"t such a good one – I"ve apparently went over my daily quota of 250MB and it was only 11AM. And there I was thinking I was being a good boy by hosting the images elsewhere so as not to cane my ADSL bandwidth that this site runs off!

Anyway I"ve copied up my last "images" folder to somewhere else for the time being but there is a few images which I uploaded straight to Plus net without copying into the local copy of the images site first so the latest updates are missing – I apologise all should be well soon!