but after 1 year I may have the fastest Z PC.

sadly its become dated before it was even installed. started this project 1 year ago exactly, and due to a bum touch screen that took 7 months to repair, it never got installed.

but now it has(FM transmittor and DVD drive all that are left to be installed)

system specs are as follows
Asus nForce 2 mobo
1600+ (1.2ghz) AMD athlon
512mb memory
integrated Gforce 4 MX (8xAGP slot open)
40gig HD
DVD rom
Xenarc VGA touch screen

total cost of that was about 1100$(all purchased a year ago, hence the high prices)

on top of that, I built a custom PC case from aluminum L bars and diamond plate, only way to fit a full size ATX MOBO in the glove box with room to spare.

cool thing is, its totally upgradable. in that I mean take ANY PC you might possibly be running right now, and itd fit in there. I have 4 unused PCI slots, USB ports ect ect.

owell, picture time

 

sweet, can't wait to check it out this weekend!

 

Ares,

You gonna be at the Evolution meet this weekend? If so, I'd like to see your set-up. I've got an unused laptop that I've been considering using for a similar purpose.

Scott

 

home made case? cuz it looks like a bunch of alluminum bars putting together...

 

it is just that. light weight and super small. exactly as large as it needs to be. a normal tower case would never fit

 

dont think Im going to the evolution meet, going to 2003Z's meet though

 

eh the modulator is giving me sh*t. anyone else here deal with the whole inverter+modulator issue?

I know I need to rework the grounding, sketchy on the details, if anyone knows what Im missing give me a PM.

 

ares,

Is the HD working fine for you, being a desktop HD not a laptop HD?

I have the same screen setup but I'm still think about the PC

Az

 

well its been in the car for a year, the whole PC has, its lived through bumps that my rims didnt live through. the boards took 120degree summer heat, and it all runs fine.

but it wasnt ON for any of that of course.

if you designing it now, lay the harddrive vertical, I didnt and that may be a problem. supposedly these guys are more resiliant than many think. theres also a hard drive suspension thing that somebody on mp3car found, with that and vertical mount, it should be fine.

 

I wouldn't suggest vertical mount. Yes you can prevent head crash (the disks touching when you hit a bump) Vertical mount can cause the read head & arm to scratch the disk.
Think of a old LP turntable. The read head is the needle and the LP is the disk. Mount it vertical and the arm will oscillate with the bump (ie Taking the needle and moving it back and forth over the LP)
I think someone had a problem where the arm was too heavy and that the vertical mount restrict the arm to move up and read the disk.

 

This was a shock protector that someone posted.


Here

 

Thanks guys,

I was assembling my Z pc today, but it did not work, I guess my windows XP CD is screwed up or something,

Do you guys know if it is possible to hook up a laptop HD to a normal desktop mother board?

Thank you,
Az

 

why not just stick a laptop in the glove box, with an aux keyboard, mouse and video out to the nav screen?

 

Or why not just do this:

http://www.350zfrenzy.com/forum/show...&threadid=1386


http://www.350zfrenzy.com/forum/show...&threadid=1403

 

Sure is, I have used these before:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/laptopsf...o35laphar.html

 

yeah, I tried it, and there is an adaptor for it, didnt work for me... but apparently thats not the norm(as I said, nothing worked for me in this project.)

I ended up just thinking, these regular HD's are half the price, twice the space, twice the speed, and for what? not like a laptop is intended to be thrown around either... though they are low power comsumption which is important for the DC-DC guys. I got 300watts at my disposal. may as well enjoy em.

anyway, the FM modulator is screwed, and I gave up on it. went to microcenter and got the belkin transmittor II, it has the ability to transmit at any and all stations at a .1 interval. works on batterys(though in the future it takes straight 12v in, so Ill work that out), and got no inverter feedback at all.

problem solved, just printing out the shift boot install as I type this, so I can do that while its out. and put her back together.

next weekend I need to make a mounting plate for the mailbox slot where a powered USB hub and DVD rom will sit.