What front end software did you use? Or is that just the OS?
What does the music player look like?

 

Is the a VGA to RCA adapter? I think I could expand to in car linuxbox later on and run it to my dvds seperate audio video input. I guess u lose your 4 channel sound though huh?

 

No, its VGA to VGA. No RCA stuff here.

 

where did you get the bezel for the double din screen?

 

actually there are VGA to RCAs. I have RCA inputs on my screen but no VGA.

 

that is \the sickest carpc i ever seen

 

Thanks for all the positive responses guys.

 

looks great

 

Hey I used to use Red Hat Linux. Only thing I didnt like was that it took for ever to boot up. Is there something u can do to have it boot quickly?

 

For my main OS I am using Ubuntu 9.04 which has significant boot enhancements since 8.10 (pictured in my original post). I will need to update you guys with my overall boot time , which I am guessing is about 60 seconds right now.

I am also experimenting with 2 other OS's: TinyXP (remastered version of XP), boots in about 45 seconds. And Moblin (Linux XFCE Based), which has the most impressive boot time of about 20 seconds or less, but needs development. Moblin is still in alpha stages and only works for intel atom processors.

Ubuntu is by far the most stable, I only keep windows around for Evoscan. The moment WINE provides USB support i will ditch M$ altogether. The next thing I will do to increase boot time is move to a Solid State drive.

The power supply (M2-ATX), keeps the PC on for 10 minutes while I do things like pump gas or get groceries. This helps minimize the annoyance caused by bootup time.

 

hell the power supply would be enough for me. A one time boot of a minute or two is probably all good. I usually let my car warm up for a couple minutes anyway.
I think somone allready brought it up, but if there was some kind of hibernation or something, that would be cool. My old laptop would do a memory dump, and shut completely off. When I turned it back on it was pretty quick. Yeah nonvolatile memory drives would be awesome. Put the OS on the solidstate, and then u could use a big hard drive for media.

 

Freaken awesome job man. I was just looking for a double din DVD player and came upon your thread. Talking about you going above and beyond what I'm after. One question, where was the best/cheapest place you found for your double din bezel? You have a link?

 

hibernation still pulls a draw on the battery. I am also running a mini battery so I don't want to decrease its life and/or risk a no-start condition because of my carpc.

Fast booting is definitely a better solution, and fortunately it is being developed because of net books that really don't have a long battery life. If it only took 10 seconds to boot, there would be no reason for hibernation, or even screen savers for that matter.

 

definately. I worked at Frieghtline (just got layed off =) and the trucks have a module that checks the battery voltage and if it dips below a certain point, it will cut off the power completely to prevent a no start. Definately, a 10 sec boot would proably be faster than my old Panasonic CD player haha.

 

I think the best price you will find for the Double Din Bezel is through www.japanparts.com
I paid roughly $40 for mine plus shipping.