Originally Posted by roylovelock

thanks dejan thats excatly the sort of pointers i was looking for. Its a blooming minefield out there with so much miss information it was making my head spin lol.

Ive just checked out the mainboard your recomending and that is very similar to what i was looking at, i had been thinking about the amp side of the matters and was suspect if the mainboards could cope direcly, you have answered my thought processes there (mind reader lol).
It was actually your fault me wanting to do this on my car as i saw your video and thought wow.

I was looking at the centrafuse software, it isnt cheap but looks like it works well and everyone seems to rave about it, just how quick is it at booting from cold?, are the features already working whilst its booting windows in background etc?

I was thinking about just having windows installed to sd card and boot from that, then have an usb 500gb 2.5" (or 2 250gb) mounted along side the main box - this way if the drives do fail i still have radio / gps etc and not have a complete system meltdown which windows can be very good at doing.

where abouts is the can plug located? is that the one around the steering collum or is it in the iso connections on the current cd player?.

I am seriously looking forward to this project - im gona get all the equipment i need and hopefully do the job in one day when the kids are on holiday (the wife also works in a school so she can look after them).


sorry one more question, is there a connection block i could purchase to save me cutting the iso block?, this would also make installation easier to put in or remove - it would be prefrable to have the audio with normal phono socket but flyleads would do the job.
thanks
roy

sorry about the questions im sure there are gona be many more before i complete the job - im putting aside £700 for this experiament - to get the same job done at a specialist im sure would reach around £1500, but im sure i will go beyond the money ive put aside.

Hi,
I think this Zotac ION F Series is good enought if you will not do any sound processing on your carpc.

As Im say first try onboard sound card connect to your amplifier If Im right it use Realtek ALC662 HD Audio codec but Im not shure if have enought powerfull output(Vpp) to direct run your amplifier. As Im say this you must first try and then you will see... If will not be ok then you have another solution PCI-express sound card somethin like Asus Xonar D2X or Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe(You can run RCA direct to your amplifiers) or Asus Xonar Essence STX(Only 2 channel)
With Zotac board you must use xover's on your amplifiers or external DSP, maybe it can handle very basic sound processing... If you plan to do sound processing on pc then look for some powerfull " or 4 core CPU!!! Afcourse first try first methode before you buy Case othervise you will must buy another one when you will order pci-e sound card :D

Centrafuse cost 80USD, you get 2 activations(you can install it to 2 PC's). Navigation version have old maps so currently is not worth to buy nav version... CF load few second's more than RR or other front end's. You can run it as shell(Im not try this how to load other app which are setup to run on win start). Shell mode replace explorer.exe with Centrafuse.exe and instead to show desktop load centrafuse on your start.

If you have SD card you can try install windows on it. I can tell you that Im have one of first SSD's which has have cappacity 32GB and read 40MB/s write 10MB/s. Windows are boot very loong and all time has been unresponseable... Then Im replace it with another IDE SSD(Mtron Mobi3025) which have 90MB/s read and 85MB/s write, system has fly like a rocket :D Do not buy Mtron because you will have problems with RMA(Factory closed)...

CAN wires you can get on OBD connector(I don't know which pin's) or headunit connector. Because I do not use headunit Im make male ISO power connector which have 2 pin's for CAN-A and CAN-B(If Im shure - do not remember anymore) and Im plug it into original ISO connector, maybe Im use GND pin too, +12V is not necessary. As Im understand you you will use original HU, so you can temporary remove it, take isolation from this two wires off, solder new wire's to this orig. wire's and isolate wires, put HU back and connect this new wires to CANUSB/CAN232 interface. This will not effect to functions of your HU, BUT be shure that you will not CUT wire, othervise your HU will not work.

Originally Posted by roylovelock

sorry - yes windows 7 sleep is almost instant on - i use this feature all the time on my notebook and its excellent ive not had an single issue with usb ports - but i will give it a try if it dosent work to wll i can stuff xp on.
one other question sorry, FM radio, do you just use a usb dongle (maybe a tv one as well would do the job) or are there specific pci cards avalible, ive looked around but cant seem to find any refrence to fm ratio at all.
my shopping list is getting bigger daily lol
thanks
roy

nvrmind just found fm bits n pieces on cf website thanks

Sleep and Hibryd Sleep is not same thing. Win XP have sleep and have hibernate. Win Vista and Win 7 have both(sleep and hibernate) + combination of both which is called Hibryd Sleep. How work this?
When you press PWR button PC make hibernate file and go to SLEEP. If your pc do not lose power when is in sleep then turn on from sleep and is instant on(2-5s from button press) if you lose power in time when pc is in sleep then it resume from hibernate(take more than sleep but still get same screen and you can continue with work)...
Why is hibryd sleep ok? You set up cut off voltage on your PSU to 11V and when you turn off(hibryd sleep) pc and go to shop you have instant on pc from sleep. But if you leave car parked long time and voltage fall down to 11V psu kill sleep and you still can turn on car, but pc resume from hibernate.
In Win XP you will get system crash error...

I don't use FM radio or TV, I use only WEBRadio(plugin developed by me) to listen audio streams and where I have UMTS or HSDPA I can use WEBVideo(plugin developed by me) to see some video streams...