Mac mini in a Volkswagen

pyramis writes "Matt Turner has installed a Mac mini into his Volkswagen as an integrated audio/video system. He's distributed the I/O ports around the cab for convenient access and installed a remote power button right into the dashboard. Cool pics of all of this, plus a detailed article on that cool power button."

Re:already /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

mirror [mirrordot.org]...

Site down...

[ral315]

Mirrordot link [mirrordot.org]
Coral cache [nyud.net]

Re:LOL WHAT A CROCK

[Upaut]

I'm afraid I don't quite understand.

Let me see if I can break it down for you:What's so goddamn novel about throwing an underpowered, overpriced Mac inside a dashboard?

Well for starters, its a very well done hack. Second, the poster shows that it can display maps, and quite probably can aide in navigation. Third, the mac can store a very large music library, and comes with the ease of itunes. Forth, he made a very nice dash/overall car mod to include a ipod dock, a power outlet, and many shiny buttons...

If one were interested in getting a portable media center for his car, he would have many options that involve spending less money and/or getting more bang for your buck. Why, for the $500 he spent on his fashion accessory that can't play games, he could've gotten a Dell desktop with approximately double the speed, and expandability to boot, plus he would've instantly been able to use the vast array of Windows and Linux software available.

The mac is shiny. And playing unreal at 94 mph along the freeway is not something I want to be doing...

Proof once again that Macs are nothing more than an item for trend whores and label sluts.

I had a Dell for one year before it fried. Bough another, same deal. The costomer service/documentation sucked. On the other hand, I have now had a mac Powerbook for the last two years, and its providing better functionality than any other machine I have bought. When you buy apple, you buy quality. Think of an apple as a Lexus, and a dell as a Ugo. Sure, the Ugo will get you from point A to point B, but it is made of inferrior parts, tends to fail, and lacks any style.

Re:It isn't the hardware.

[momogasuki]

His car, a GTI 1.8T, can be reprogrammed (chipped) to run the turbo at higher boost, in addition to running octane-specific timing maps for more power. Stock is 180 hp, but the ECU can be reprogrammed for around 215 hp on 91 octane, 220 hp on 93 octane, and 235 hp on 100 octane.

There is already aftermarket ECU reflashing software (e.g., http://www.giacusa.com/) for the 1.8T. However, it would be cool if he could rig the Mac Mini to switch between different performance programs. That would be a true hack.

Re:LOL WHAT A CROCK

[thesnarky1]

I'm not sure about your definition of expandable... All the Dell's I've been in, fixing for my friends, fixing for my work, etc, are NOT expandable. They come with the least bays I've EVER seen. The cases allow for one (1) extra internal device, one (1) extra stick of RAM, and one (1) extra PCI slot. Now, this might not be true for the XPS, but that is a huge waste of money. For half the price of my Dell, I bought parts off of Newegg and got a PC that out performs it considerably. for $500 I don't know ANY Dell I'd buy, and I priced them all under $1000 for work. I find it funny that you called him a label whore, while mentioning Dell here, why not just say a PC? I realize I said Newegg, but I will wholeheartedly reccommend them to anyone who's buying computer parts, because it's the best price, and best quality.

An osx interface for such applications

[alphakappa]

is being developed at iDash (http://www.idash.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

The actual link

[michaeldot]

http://idash.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

"iDash is software for the newest frontier in computing on the Mac: the car. While OS X does have one of the best user interfaces among all of the operating systems out there, its pretty difficult (not to mention dangerous) to use while driving down the road. iDash is a frontend that is able to control almost any applications via a plugin written Applescript. Thus enabling the intigration of music, movie and photo collections as well as GPS & Radio features into an easy to use all-in-one application."

It would also be pretty cool to have Dashboard [apple.com] widgets on your dashboard...!

Re:One question...

[Twid]

Here you go [carnetix.com]. With photos [carnetix.com] even.

THE CNX-P1900 DUAL OUTPUT 140 WATT INTELLIGENT DC-DC POWER REGULATOR

Compatible with the Mac mini, as well as P4 system cases from Travla!

The retail price of the P1900 is $99.95. Target availability is April 2005.

Re:One question...

[CRC'99]

Only problem is that these PSUs don't deal with 'sleep' too well - and will keep a constant drain on the battery - unless you want to completely close down your PC each time you stop the car.

Hibernate works ok on Windows, however the mini mac's sleep mode does not power the system down. If you can maintain ~800mA max drain on your battery forever, then this might not be an issue - but if you can't, you'll get stuck really quickly.

I currently run a Celeron 2.4Ghz with 512Mb dial channel DDR ram, Radeon 9200 and a 7" touchscreen in the car - and yes, I use a full size desktop hard drive. These babies are tougher than people think. I've had a car written off with the PC in the back still operating. Only thing that happened was that the CPU fan popped off it's clips.

I say again, don't stress too much about normal 3.5" HDDs in a car...

Re:Perhaps...

[bergeron76]

Heh, you might like this book:

http://www.dashwerks.com/dw_geek_my_ride.php [dashwerks.com]

The foreword was written by none other than Steve "Woz" Wozniak.