My In-Dash Car PC project

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.