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My In-Dash Car PC project

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Accessories & Modifications' started by TheForce, Jan 9, 2007.

  1. Presto

    Presto Has his homepage set to PC

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    double post. please ignore/delete
     
  2. Presto

    Presto Has his homepage set to PC

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    I don't believe SSDs are necessary. Initially, in building v1.0 of the carputer (end of 2001), I took care in reducing vibration and shock by surrounding the computer case in foam. As the revisions progressed, I applied less shock-proofing to the setup. My current setup just has the hd fastened on the board, and sitting, unsecured, underneath the drivers' seat. Even with stiffer suspension, and hard driving, I have had no issues after 3 years of use. Speedfan also reports no SMART problems. My cousin has been running a similar setup for the same amount of time, and there are no probelms on his end, either.
     
  3. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    OK here is a quick update. I did the warm hard drive test before it got 60F outside and the computer worked fine. I have to admit that I ordered two of the Gskill 64GB drives before I did the test. I figured that even if the hard drives was not the cause of the lockups I could still play with a somewhat cheap SSD. And if the SSD drives don't function well in the cold I should at least get a little performance boost when they do work.

    Just a note the instruction manual says the operating temp for industrial is -40C to 85C and the commercial is 0C to 85C. I don't know what that means unless they mean storage temperature and operating temperature.

    So I got my drives today and used xxclone to copy the contents to a spare hard drive then used xxclone to copy everything back. That program is the best program I have ever worked with when trying to clone a drive. Anyway I got everything working like it was on the laptop drives. I tested a few things like boot up times and testing to see if I see any of that stuttering people talk about. I set up my drives in a raid 0 with a 64k stripe and NTFS formatted to 512 bytes. My mobo only supports SATA 150 and a max stripe size of 64k for the raid. Boot up times seem to be about the same as the laptop drives but programs respond much faster. Especially RoadRunner with the Digital FX skin. Things seem to happen as soon as you select what you want. The laptop drives you had to wait a second or two.

    As for stuttering I have to say I did see some when I was trying to make it stutter but the stutter was so quick you really had to pay attention to actually see it. You defiantly will not see it for normal car PC use or at least it will not interfere with normal car PC use. Well I don't know about a single drive but in a raid 0 the stuttering is almost non existent. I'm guessing you might see it more if it was used as a normal desktop computer.

    After I installed everything back in my car I found RR would hang for about a minute when resuming from hibernation. For some reason it turn out to be my generic USB bluetooth device. Since I don't use BT in the PC for anything I just decided to leave it out. The only time I ever used it was to play around with the wii remote accelerometers.

    The last thing to try out is cold weather performance. Looks like its going to get down to 29F tonight. So I will report back in a week or if the PC locks up. Which ever comes first.

    With the little time I have played with the new drives I think I'm going to like it. I just cant wait to get two Intel X25-E for under $500 and put them in a raid 0 for my desktop PC.
     
  4. Dngrsone

    Dngrsone Underwhelmed, to say the least

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    This means that the commercial version of the device is guaranteed to operate within the temperature range of 0º to 85º Celsius (32º to 185º F). The industrial models are guaranteed to operate down to -40º. This means the devices are a little more robust (theoretically) and that justifies the price increase for industrial models.

    So, if you try to run your carputer when it's below freezing and you purchased the commercial devices, then you might run into an issue. Realistically, I don't think it'll be a problem, unless you live in the Iron mountains or Alaska. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
     
  5. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    Well then how would I find out if the drive I bought is industrial? The back of the box only has the -40c to 85c listed. I don't see any other indication of commercial or industrial model listed anywhere on the packaging or on their site. Unless I'm not looking in the right location. Heck even if I don't have the industrial version I think with the Ohio cold winters it should do fine.
     
  6. Dngrsone

    Dngrsone Underwhelmed, to say the least

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    If it came in a plain box and only the wide parameters are on the box, then you have the industrial version. Depending on the manufacturer, there may be no physical difference between the two anyway, or it may be that those that have data corruption at the lower temps during burn-in are labeled commercial (Intel did something similar with several of their processor lines- they'd ramp the clock until it freaked out then labeled it at the last good clock frequency).
     
  7. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    OK the PC is still locking up. I first started out by turning on the car and then the PC. I played around with it for about 5 minutes then headed to work. About 5 minutes later it locked up. I turned off the PC and turned it back on. About 3 minutes later it locked up again. Then as I headed back home from work I tried it one more time and it locked up with in about 3 minutes. I left the PC off until I got home. As soon as I got home I parked the car and started the PC again. It ran fine for about 10 minutes. So I thought it might be vibration issue. So then I started shaking the heck out of the PC. about a minute later after I started shaking the PC locked up. So I rebooted again and started shaking again. It locked up again pretty quick. After another reboot it said one of my drives was missing. So I took it apart inside the house and reconnected all the cables. I then started the thing back up and shook the hell out of it for 5 minutes. It has not locked up yet.

    As a test I decided to see what happened if I were to pull one of the SATA cables while I was in windows. When I pulled it XP blue screened. I don't think the SATA cables are the cause of the lock up.

    I'm wondering if it may be a combination of the cold weather and vibration?

    I think I might have to start working on the computer out in the cold to narrow down what the exact cause is.
     
  8. Bob64

    Bob64 Sapphire of the Blue Sky

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    My initial thought would be that it may be windows corruption, believe it or not.

    If it still freezes, try doing a backup of your current drive (or find a clean drive to re-install windows on).
    then reinstall windows and then do your shake (n bake/freeze) test to see if it still freezes.
     
  9. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    This was actually a fresh install. And the PC runs fine in the house.
     
  10. Dngrsone

    Dngrsone Underwhelmed, to say the least

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    I'm thinking vibration is definitely a factor, here. Look for any metallic parts running around loose inside your casing, if you have one, then make sure that the motherboard is well away from said casing (incorrectly mounted boards can flex enough to short to case). Make sure your processor is well-seated, as well as any accessory cards.

    Check for chafed or frayed wiring, especially ribbon cables-- any exposed wire in a ribbon acts like a radio antenna, attracting noise and therefore data corruption.

    If you have a magnifying glass of some sort, you could check the solder joints for material defects or thermal damage-- the solder would have cracks around the component lead or wire. This damage is more likely around parts that would be moved around a bit and parts that handle larger amounts of current and heat. The power supply would be where I'd start. Frankly, this is unlikely, but sometimes the manufacturing process is imprecise during the soldering stage, or vibration combined with temperature extremes cause undue stress on the boards.
     
  11. tundrwd

    tundrwd Member

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    Might I suggest running the OS from a CF card? Solid-state, pretty cheap these days, and since CF cards use ATA specs, they appear just like HDD to the OS.

    With Linux, you'll have to adjust the kernel parms so you aren't updating the a-time (access time) of the file, since ALL flash media has a limited write life. I don't think you'll need to do much for Windows. Just use a FAT32 formatted filesystem (NTFS will have access time updates to directory entries similar to *nix), and you shouldn't have a problem.

    However, to be honest, with the price of CF cards these days, you can buy a couple of handfuls, and what do you care if they die in a year or so? At newegg.com, 4GB Kingston CF cards are going for $12/USD each. I know I've seen them cheaper. I'd stick with the "better" brands - Kingston, Sandisk, RiData... I've used the cheaper stuff (PNY, A-Data, etc.), and they work fine, just usually have slower access speeds.

    Many mobos have CF slots on them, and there are PCI cards that have CF slots on them for use as a hard disk. Or just use a USB->CF reader, and boot via USB.

    Then you don't have to worry about bumpy roads, etc.

    I'm definitely interested in this sort of thing, I'm just not ready to plop down $300+ for a screen. With the proliferation of GPS devices these days, using LCD and touchscreen, I'm hoping that some of these can be mod'ed to handle VGA input, etc.
     
  12. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    I have checked all the cables and the mobo is secure to the case. I guess I could check for bad solder joints but I would think if there were any I should be getting lock ups when it warm out too. I know the crack could get bigger when it was cold due to the metal contracting but still if there were any vibrations when its warm it still would lose contact I would think.

    tundrwd I just installed two SSD a few days ago. They seem to work very well when the computer is working.

    I tried another experiment today. I went to the rat shack and bought some of that canned air. I sprayed a whole can ( up side down to get the liquid out ) over the entire mobo and power supply. I thought that might help narrow down the issue with the cold but the PC kept on going. I'm going to double check the all the wires and put it back in the car. If it locks up again I think I will just give up until I can get some time to actually work on it out in the cold.
     
  13. jorgeez

    jorgeez New Member

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    Great job on that in-dash PC TheForce. It looks good, I really like it!
     
  14. Bob64

    Bob64 Sapphire of the Blue Sky

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    Might I suggest sticking it in the freezer to simulate a cold environment?
     
  15. momanz

    momanz Junior Member

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    Try stripping back your hardware to a bare minimum, and slowly add components until you get another failure. I had a problem with a usb hub once that I wasn't able to trace until I did just that.

    -m
     
  16. tundrwd

    tundrwd Member

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    Since you have (or had) it dual-booting, run it with Linux. Just run "tail -f /var/log/messages" in a terminal window, see if it's throwing any hardware errors just before or during a lock-up.

    Or let it lock up, then check /var/log/messages to see what you've got going on.
     
  17. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    No room in the freezer. :(

    I have tried stripping every thing I could. Most of my stuff is USB so the only thing hooked up would be the VGA and USB interface for the screen. It still locked up.

    I never did go through with the dual boot. If I have to I can try to see if I can get Fedora Live to boot and see if it locks up.

    Since I had a few extra SATA cables I decided to replace them just in case while I still had the PC removed from the car. I also hot glued the ends of some cables I cut when I first built the PC just to make sure none of the ends of the wires were touching anything.

    I did another test this morning. I turned on the car and the PC. I let the PC run and play music for about 10 minutes. It did not even hiccup. Now I will see how it works when I leave for work here in the next few minutes. I also have left my PC laying down instead of on its side like it normally is. I will leave it laying down for this test today and if it does not lock up I will put it on its side for tomorrows test.
     
  18. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    Well the PC locked with in 3 minutes out on the road. I turned it off and back on and it locked up again witn in 3 minutes. On my way home tonight I will try it one more time. Then when I get home I will see if it locks up with the car sitting still.
     
  19. Dngrsone

    Dngrsone Underwhelmed, to say the least

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    I wonder if it's noise on the input power. [​IMG]
     
  20. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    Well I tried it again on my way home and it locked up again before the desktop could load.

    When I got home I booted it again and had no problems for about 5 minutes then it locked up on its own. I rebooted again let it play for about 5 minutes then shook the hell out of it for about a minute and it did not lock up.

    I'm starting to think it may be a noise issue but I cant pinpoint it.

    I have the +12v hooked directly to the battery. The negative is hooked in on part of the chassis near the battery.

    If it would be noise in the power how would I fix the issue? And why would it just now start happening when its getting colder? I have rigged up an old mini ATX power supply to power the car PC when I have it in the house. I wonder if I ran that power supply off my inverter to power the PC if that would eliminate any "noise"? I guess I could give it a try in the morning. I have the thing set up so its just "plug and play".

    Also if it is a noise issue why hasn't it locked up during post? Why has it always locked up either during XP booting or while XP has loaded? Maybe I should try safe mode? I was starting to think it may have been a windows update causing the issue seeing as how updates are the only thing really different since it has started locking up but I think I can throw that idea out since I have seen it lock up on the XP logo screen and lock up 5-10 minutes playing songs.