using debian on a powerbook g3 233mhz (lombard), a kensington auto/ac/air adapter and crystalfontz lcd screen with usb->serial adapter you can a pretty slick (and inexpensive) in car mp3 play for your car. add a wifi card and manage all the music when you pull in to the driveway.
Well it looks like an impressive technical feat, but i have to question the practicality of it. There are plenty of CD-based mp3 players for cars (I have one), or you can by a cheap stereo with an Aux-input and then get a personal mp3 player like an Ipod or what have you. That would be a lot cleaner, practical, and cheaper if you bought everything from scratch. Not to mention easier.
People might also laugh at you for your bad spelling jon!
That is so 2003:
http://www.robotthoughts.com/?q=image/tid/70
to me it’s not so much a matter of the bulky nature of this. it’s more about the fact that you can do it. needless to say there are other alternatives for mp3s in your car but this is a fine example of how to put an old laptop to work.
the better question here is why would you do it to the volvo s60? being that it’s a volvo it’ll be in the shop 90% of its life. the mechanics might heist the laptop. :
Spelling? You criticize jon for spelling? Did you even read the blurb? Sure, the spelling is fine but it lacks little details like capitalization, and oh, I don’t know… VERBS?
I rather like the digital picture frame on the same site. I was planning on making one myself, but I can’t seem to find an LCD controller for my monitor :-/
mp3 player? yeah that’s great unless you have about 61,000 mp3s like some of us. granted you can’t listen to all of that in a single sitting, but it’s about the “i can do it” factor, and the variety factor.
mp3 formatted cds are so 2004, the future is in-car media. afterall, bmw and honda are forthcoming with those.
saab recently introduced an audio jack into their accessories lineup for the 9-3. got mine put in last week. works like a charm to connect my ipod.
Aren’t car stereos anymore equiped with Tape decks?
yeah, welcome to a few years ago.. carputers have come quite a ways from the days of serial lcds. Try checking out the following:
http://www.mp3car.com
Roo, et al:
I didn’t write the blurb. As you may note on my site, I am one of the few remaining people on the internet who believe in using “old time” things like punctuation, spelling, and yes, even verbs.
Thank you
That’s so 2000 — check out the Pathintosh (from 2001):
http://web.archive.org/web/20021211033459/www.mp3car.com/usersites/Destin/Home.html
The Pathintosh used a 500MHz Powerbook, running MacOS 9 (eek!), fully integrated into the car, with a touchscreen, factory steering wheel controls and hidden compartment. Plus it didn’t rely on a crappy cassette-deck adapter.
you people are a bunch of lifeless squids. this is an effing *free* site sharing hacks. if you’ve fooking seen it before then why didn’t your dumb arses forward links to pt?
to my knowledge there’s no free lunch here. get to work and dig up some new sheet to pass along if you’re so flipping high and mighty and lay off the guy for christfuckingsake.
Perhaps we are submiting the hacks and it is them not doing a very good job at spending 10mins/day researching each hack.
It doesn’t take much time, that much is obvious.
jordie ::
maybe the hacks you submit aren’t worthy.
let me remind you this is a *free* site. these people must mak money doing other things.
jon: I wasn’t criticizing you at all, I should have been more clear, and I apologize for the misunderstanding. I was saying that it’s foolish [of hbogart] to criticize your spelling given the grammatical errors in the blurb that we are all commenting on.
Debian net-install is great if you want to build a machine and use as little as possible drive space. I built an apache web server on a thinknic (with a 20g HD hacked in) using less than 50m drive space. very nice.
I have a similar set up but it is much easier. I have the same model g3 and just run itunes off of it. if you have a wifi and itunes in your house you can listen to all the music wirelessly and to put the sound in your car I have 2 solutions, buy a tape deck to 8 converter or a fm transmitter like iTrip (something different but same concept). it is a whole lot easier
You know, you could also add seach recognition and other things. Add mapping software and mount the monitor in front.
The possibilities are endless with a laptop.
I did the same thing with a HP 266Mgz Laptop. Can you imagine the shit i used to get from police on this. Really only the ones on The navy base i work at. They told me i could not have it on while driving!. But the Lt. Somebody in front has a Lexus and his dam screen can be seen a mile away! i mean he just lets this guy pass! I was using it for the GPS and radio capabilitys and i got a fooking tiket for it. I was even brought in and held in confinement @ the jail/questioning room with a gaurd in place just so the NCIS (Naval Criminal Inv. Services could question me on my no sh** quote “So,… you have a MOBIL COMPUTER?” How baddly i wish i could of told him “Why yes, it dims the light for me in my car for me and it gets great gas MPG!. Hell I even got it to ding when i open the frekin Door! I even got one of those Optical drives in my rig that reads shiny metal disks! 4 hours of this BS!. Just cuase my name is middle eastern LIKE… Well here is the good stuff! I found out that if you have a computer and an internet connection tied with GPS, you can find the location of all cop cars! It’s true! All police cars are suppose to be wired so that they give of a digital signal of some sort and have wireless modems. To hell with radar detectors. All you have to do is fet a wifi card that will alow you to track the direction of the signals and map it to the gps location. It is also rumored that all patrol cars have to post on some site where they will be patrolling! Get all that data and life is a breeze for speeders. Add a radar detector like the valintine, and you have one sweet Rig in your car. Also used mine as a security system. Got so many fools scraping my car and trying to see if it was open, I got the pic of everyone AND got my car repaired 3 times for scrathces someone else put on my car. I ran 4 usb cameras of a usb hub, all of them were placed in key locations. ALSO had a wireless mic/fm transmiter on the outside of the car. I used the cellphone to car radio adaptor and added a longer antena and a 3v battery pack made up of duct tape and D” cell NiCad pack. So much fun till I left the thing in cali. Oh well! now i will try this with a SFF PC
There is a word for those who utilyze discarded technology to enrich their society, their lives…
But I cannot even find it!
Can you find it and post it to me?
I recall it has two sylables, and 7 to 8 letters.
Something like Hodgling or Muckler…
Otherwise, this site, and the WWW is precisely perfect, for me!
I know I’m weeks late and I’m sure nobody will read but hwy not, I’ve been running a linux based MP3 player in my car for about two years now. With a 4×20 Character LCD screen , RF Remote, and a cool “shutdown” button just like does to command a missile in the movies. Anyways; the link provided shows some of the installation plus a wacky connected-to-it project (playing a Ferrari’s engine’s sound through my speakers, depending on the RPM+Throtlle position switch of my own car – in real time);
more functional pictures can be found at:
http://nestor.homedns.org:30000/newalbum/index.py?admin=0&oper=list&dir=././20041018
We installed Linux in a car back in 2000. You can see our site here: http://www.dashpc.com
Cheers,
CB
is there anything fancy about having it run on linux…if you have the laptop in the car just play your songs through windows media or something like that…completly useless post
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