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Hardware

Homebrewed In-Dash CD-ROM Player 140

Posted by timothy from the nice-instructions dept.
DrD8m writes: "Hardware is changing faster every day, It's very sad to throw away old hardware. This is an example for recyclying it. It's a Computer Audio CD Car Player HOWTO. Using an old computer CD drive in your car. Easy to do and Cool! Are there any projects like this? I'm sure there are, but I don't want to be a N.A.S.A. engineer to do it." This is the best kind of online instruction -- well-illustrated, no guarantees, creative re-use.
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Homebrewed In-Dash CD-ROM Player More

Homebrewed In-Dash CD-ROM Player

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  • Slashdot DDOS Crew (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We work fast so your site wont.

  • Re:Potential problem (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is so why we should drive cars made out of Nerf(TM). Accidents become enjoyable.
  • This site is much better for professional in-dash MP3 radios.

    http://www.highwaymp3.com [highwaymp3.com]

  • Illegal Use under DMCA (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As we all know from our dealings with Cue-Cat, it's illegal to use a product under the DMCA in a way not originally intended. Shame, Shame! This sort of abuse of the EUA is going to hurt inovation!

  • Re:Cool... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to work at pcliquidator.com go there, they always have cheap used stuff. Lots of CDROMs from what I remember. Neil

  • No skipping (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A friend of mine put an old CD-ROM into his car about 2-3 years agao and it works perfectly. He has an very old diesel car and he drives on dirt roads ect yet he claims that it never skips or jumps. I can confirm that there was no skipping on normal roads as I heard it saw it working. He also never had any protection such as foam or whatever to absorb shock. I could not access the article so I am not sure about the way they did it but basicly my friend just hooked it up to a 12v power supply and wire from the phones jack to a small amp.

  • Re:Other old hardware (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    P.S. Does anyone have any ideas for those 8086's? :)

    Paperweights.
  • Here's the really good one, [kenwoodusa.com] and a description of the thing [discountcarstereo.com].

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • A truly high end [kenwoodusa.com] in-dash MP3 CD player/changer controller. I want.

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • Yeah, and we know how the P4 manages [slashdot.org] such impressive heat characteristics.

  • Potential problem (Score:5)

    by Tim Macinta ( 1052 ) <twm@alum.mit.edu> on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:52PM (#221286) Homepage
    Car CD players are usually built to withstand shock, whereas my CD-ROM drive tends to skip when jostled. Is there a way to dampen the shocks from pot-holes, etc. when using a CD-ROM drive in a car? (I don't know if the site in question answers this as it seems to be slashdotted.)
  • $1200 for a ten gig hard drive? Damn, that's quite expensive.

    You could argue that the bulk of that $1200 is for R&D, hardware, etc. However, the 60G version is $2200. So, they are charging you $1000 to upgrade the standard notebook hard drive. Pure theft.

  • Now the real question, where can I get a ethernet card for my '82 Pinto?
    After you solve that problem, the next problem would be to find a long enough cable.

    ...or perharps you should just go WLAN... =)

  • Why bother? Better stuff exists. (Score:5)

    by GeorgieBoy ( 6120 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:03PM (#221289) Homepage
    I mean, sure, it's geeky and all, and it uses a piece of old hardware, but I think this is a lot cooler [aiwa.com]

    Empeg, as it started out in a homebrew fashion, is far more interesting device. Seems that Diamond has purchased that [empeg.com] though, as it's now the RioCar.
  • Kind of like how humans normally work, eh?

    Find something good. Swarm the fucker. Obliterate it. Repeat.

    Happened to California. Brazilian forests. Passenger pigeons. Baby seals. Whale oil. Etcetera.

    We're almost like not-very-smart viruses. (Not very smart because, after all, most viruses don't actually kill their host.)


    --

  • Useful as a cup holder too (Score:5)

    by Small Hairy Troll ( 9576 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:52PM (#221291)
    And if it isn't playing a CD, the cd tray can hold your mocha frappachino.
  • I've been thinking about this for a while now:

    Why don't we do something with the heat generated by our computers? Our machines use huge amounts of electricity, and a lot of that energy is converted to heat which is then just wasted. Isn't there some way we can reuse this heat to produce more electricity? I thought I read something about an invention Nasa made that would convert heat to electricity... this would be certainly nice for those dual 1.8 Ghz systems, not only conserving energy use but making them run cooler as well.

    Just a thought.

  • Re:Slashdotted instantly (Score:3)

    by RAruler ( 11862 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:52PM (#221293) Homepage
    Theres a bunch of good reasons why not to..

    a) Legality, say the information contained on the site is illegal (DeCSS), or maybe the site's author doesn't want to have it mirrored. Especially if the person depends on the ad revenue.

    b) Doesn't work all the time, say the website is dynamic, like that Perl to Flash website. There's no way to mirror that easily. Or the mechanical counter. etc.

    c) Its not the freshest information, the author could decide to revise the information. But the mirror might not reflect that.

    d) What to mirror, what not to mirror. Lets say that a site makes use of a lot of links to other sites, do you mirror those as well, and the links on those sites?

    Sometimes the internet doesn't work the way you want to, if this bothers you so much, you can devote your time to making a way to mirror sites mentioned on slashdot before they get slashdotted.

    ---
  • Windows also freaks out when it doesn't see the hardware it expects. I had to re-enable the IDE ports on my PC (all SCSI machine) to get Windows 98 to install on it because the IDE drivers kept loading and hooking onto the SCSI interrupts hanging the box. Once 98 was installed I re-disabled the IDE ports and all was fine.
  • Doesn't support VBR, unfortunatly, so I was forced to go with the Aiwa. At least someone makes stuff like this.
  • There is no federal parole.

  • These buffers are violating copyright.... (Score:4)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:21PM (#221297) Homepage
    The RIAA needs to investigate this assertion that data is copied in digial format into consumer CD player memory, sometimes MORE THAN ONCE!

    This is a blatant violation of the copywrite holder's rights.

    This is THEFT pure and simple.
  • Geez, forget your midol this morning???
  • Do not hook electronics directly to your cars 12V system!

    The power is very noisy and not very consistant. Voltages from 9V up to around 15V are 'normal'. The ignition noise is probably much more.

    You will need some sort of power supply to power a CDROM or any other device not meant for car power (Unless it is something really simple like a light or a motor.)

  • And it's very simplistic... but.. I was hoping that someone had taken the initiative to actually make it look nice in the car (imagine having a nice black face, tray loading car CD player). Also, it could even be hooked into a laptop/desktop style machine for data reading...

    (I know, the article stated "bad CD rom drives, but hey, here's hoping).

    If I had the time, I'd find an older thinkpad drive that reads CDR's and CDRW's fine, and use it in the dash, and put an led/lcd panel up front to control it (or a computer).
  • well, hide the laptop/case/etc... that's what the control screen would be for.
  • For the money he spent on that system, he could have easily gotten a WRX.

    (Okay, maybe it wasn't available at the time, but still...)
  • No one would ever parole him. Get a grip. I for one could not kill a helpless person straped to a table.
  • I would not advise anyone to buy Aiwa. I purchased one last summer. I had three stop reading CD's within a week of use. I find the kenwood line of MP3 car players work much better. They cost a little more but are worth it. Check out the Z828 at crutchfield.com
  • I've got older than that still in use... my TRS-80 Model III (Z80/2mhz) is currently acting as the serial console of my Linux box =]

    Anyway, about those XT-class parts - depending on just how many extra boards you have... [never tried it, but I do believe it's possible] feed that 8086 machine an EMS memory card >= 1mb, an 8-bit network card, at least an EGA monitor, and about 20 megs of HD and you can use it as a (slow? probably) WWW-surfing box with Arachne [arachne.cz].

    Of course, you're talking to the guy who still plays with the "modulate some frequency in the TRS-80 so it plays tunes in the static of an AM radio" program once in a while... lol =]

    BRTB

  • God forbid actually bothering to discuss this with the site owner before posting the article. At least give them the option of mirroring it before the inevitable onslaught.
  • I know this sounds lame, but it works. Cinch *something* VERY tightly around the drive.
  • I mounted an old NEC 4x Narrow SCSI on the underside of the dash of a Mercury Sable a couple of years ago 'cause the price was about 360 for the GM changer. This reader has full FF/RW/Play/Eject control on the face plate. It skips way too much (gotta be on fresh asphalt without many cracks or stationary).

    If one wanted to, one could hook it up to an SCSI-bus equipped computer under the front seat - this would be well within the 6 feet you get under the narrow SCSI spec.

    It is kinda nice that this old player uses caddies instead of a tray. I have plenty of those tihngs and they keep cd's from getting scratched in the car when you fumble in the glove box.

    - Matt

  • Anyone know of an IDE to CF converter? (Score:4)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:35PM (#221309) Homepage
    Had a thought the other day - Why not get a cheap MP3 player that takes CF cards, and attach an IDE HDD to it instead. Since CF cards look like ATA devices, there shouldn't be any major modifications necessary, should there? Since there are CF-to-IDE converters why not the other way around? ANyone got any clues?
  • Yet another site has been struck down by the Slashdot DoS effect. Authorities are scrabling to figure out how to stop it. This year alone, over 20 sites have been taken out this year alone.

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com

  • Re:Potential problem (Score:5)

    by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:04PM (#221311)
    I reccommend wrapping your tires in bubble wrap so that it absorbs the shock for every appliance in your car.
  • If its code-heavy get screen captures and make big ass jpegs. Put them on a public server someplace. Not exactly the real thing, but for most people it'll do just fine.
  • actually single-ended narrow scsi gives you 6 Meters (not feet) but you need to take into account the length of the bus on the devices attached and the controller itself too.
    if you really wanted to get a good length you'd have to go w/ differential scsi which starts at 25M but I haven't seen any diff. cdrom drives
    any way you slice it that would be an awful lot of cabling for a car.
  • ...that if this recycled gadget happens to use anything more than the barebones chassis, motor, spindle and laser of the CD-ROM unit (ie the electronics, which I can't find out as the site is badly slashdotted) then should SunComm's copy protection scheme [cdmediaworld.com] be widely adopted, none of the discs will be playable in this player, nor will you get the option of downloading "secure" MP3/WMA files of them as you supposedly will if you play the protected disc in a netified PC.

    Perhaps this is a good thing. A few thousand angry customers who can't play their discs in their car player demanding their money back will be a good shot in the arm for fair use. The European copy-protection scheme along the same lines only failed in 3% of CD players, but this was enough that it was immediately withdrawn and shelved.
  • Heh....the only reason I found his page was becuase I just bought a used RS yesterday. I wish I could have bought a WRX, but at least the RS beats my '93 FWD Legacy. ;)

    ÕÕ

  • Here's a cool system... (Score:3)

    by duplicate-nickname ( 87112 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @05:21PM (#221316) Homepage
    Check out [att.net] what this guy did to his Subaru Impreza RS. I like the LCD he used!! :)

    ÕÕ

  • Are cows the ultimate host, since we actually breed them? or are they just an ally? (hey, we guarantee you will survive as a species, but we get to eat you...)
    and where are the virii farms?
    bah!
  • Not that AMD shareholders like dealing with facts, but the P4 puts out about 25% less heat than Athlon. Even the Palamino with its much hyped power/heat reduction still puts out more heat than the P4 (or PIII).

  • Re:Turn your P4 into a space heater! (Score:4)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @06:38PM (#221319)
    Well, you wouldn't know if you read that article, since it was false. Thermal throttling has never even been observed on any P4 system in the field; I have never gotten my P4 system above 39 degrees, while the throttling point is 75. Besides, you can turn the feature off using IA32_CS_MISC_ENABLES (this is documented in volume 3 of the Pentium 4 manual). Of course, I'm certain that you didn't even bother to check, and are more confortable showing your ignorance on Slashdot.

  • Not the same thing. The Empeg is harddisk based, that Kenwood is CD based.

    The crucial difference and the reason that I bought one is that the Empeg allows you to store ALL the music you own. I have with me at all times my entire music collection...

    There are other advantages. The Empeg's software is upgradable. In the near future we're getting WMA and WAV support (for free), and in the slightly more distant future voice recognition. The quality of the components is top notch, so it sounds very good and will last a long time. The UI is well designed and makes navigating your recursive playlists very easy. Also, it looks cool, with a whole bunch of impressive animated displays that move to the music.

    Also, it runs Linux... :-)

    I can recommend it to everyone, it's an extremely cool piece of machinery, and while expensive, it is very much worth it...

  • I rigged an old Panasonic 2x cdrom into our car (just a couple o' regulators, a few conditioning caps and a cigarette lighter plug, all running through an old `ghetto blaster' that I sat in the back seat, powered in the same way). Anyway it ran perfectly even over bumps etc.

    Probably though your fancy schmancy 50x CD drive isn't going to fare so well with the bumps in the road.

    ---
    James Sleeman
  • I just came back from a camping trip where I brought my old Thinkpad 760XL with me as an mp3 player. Here's the breakdown:

    -- Laptop (64MB RAM, 2GB HD, 24x CD) with Red Hat 6.1, xmms, gnome cd player (ebay price ~$150-$200)
    -- 1 power inverter ($50)
    -- 1 lime green power strip from Wally World ($2.00)
    -- 1 pair standup speakers ($20)

    Insert power inverter into stereo cavity. Plug in power strip. Place speakers behind truck seat on each side, routing wires through middle of seat armrest hole. Plug speakers into laptop, laptop adn speakers into power strip. Boot jukebox and enjoy.

    Caveats: My truck (92 Isuzu) just happens to perfectly fit a flattened (opened all the way) laptop under the seat without the keys being touched. Your vehicle probably can't do this.
    Power inverters do not like to be on when the car is started. So you'll have to switch the inverter off for a second, start the car, adn switch the inverter back on.
    Don't forget to run the vehicle every hour or so if your parked and listening...or you'll find yourself with no battery power

    This setup worked pretty well, you can reach down and use the keys to switch tracks, etc. You don't neccesarily want to be scrolling through a menu while driving 70, though. I had a very few problems with skipping, even on rocky mountain roads. Have fun!
  • Some of my friends used to use old toshiba double spin caddy drives because they had a test jumper on the back that makes them play audio cd's when you insert them. The eject button when pressed once would skip to the next track but if you held it down for a few seconds it would eject the cd. It was pretty cool. Anyway I just wanted to post that old scsi drives don't need a play button if they have a test jumper on the back.
  • How about a gyroscope cage mounted on compressing springs?
    Or
    Just live with it.

  • This brings up a dam good question. Where could one find a programable remote control? For example, something that would plug into the serial port and you could send basic commands via remote though your back seat to the laptop stored in your trunk? Now listen you could do some pretty dam cool things with something like this, provided it had some type of customizable interface like a C API or Perl Module ;)

    #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
    use Remote;
    my $interface = Remote->new();
    while(my $command = $interface->param("input");) {
    if ($command eq "button1") {
    $interface->play_really_loud("*NIN*");
    }
    }

    Also anyone know where I could find one of those sexy little LCD displays? I know they are around, but forgot where. Something that has an open interface.

    I got 2 used laptop from work and they would be prefect for this sort of thing.

    Hrm wonder if I could get some type of GPS module for this type of thing... and map software... on linux or BSD.. Hrm

    Fuck it, I am going for it... I am building a bat mobile. Something that would make James Bond cream in his shorts.

    yea.

    and then I am going to slap a big fat fucking "POWERED BY GEEK (and gasloine)" sticker on it and mount a quick cam on the dash.

    This would make a great ride to get to work in.... I only live 2 miles for work... I think I need to move farther away like Canada or Sweden... better yet, the fucking moon... I dig man.


  • Other old hardware (Score:3)

    by ActiveSex ( 127999 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:05PM (#221326)
    Now if someone would find something cool to do with other old stuff, like this crate full of 8086's (and other assorted computer shit) I have lying around. The only reason I keep them around is because whenever I'm about to throw them out I think that they might be valuable antiques one day, or that as soon as they're gone I'll think of some ingenius project to do with them.

    At one time I had dreams of using them to control robots or control this remote sensing apparatus I had halfway designed before forgetting about it.

    I love to see old stuff resurrected again to do something really cool.

    -Markus

    P.S. Does anyone have any ideas for those 8086's? :)



    "That explains the milk in the coconuts."
  • Can't you just use the cable that is supposed to go to your sound card instead of the headphone jack? Its probably line level and perfect for your amp.

  • No, the site doesn't answer this.

    I imagine that if you wrapped it in bubble wrap (or maybe foam padding that doesn't melt) it would absorb the little shocks... most modern CD players take care of the big ones by using read-ahead buffering, which it's impossible to make these drives do (without a comptuer to drive it).

  • Calm down, take the 2-foot steel rod out of your ass, and try to appreciate THE JOKE!!!

  • Turn your P4 into a space heater! (Score:5)

    by zaius ( 147422 ) <jeff&zaius,dyndns,org> on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:52PM (#221330)
    It's even got the fans pre-installed, all you need to do is aim it in the right direction!
  • Black paint.

    HTH,
    /Brian
  • It's a waste of time. Really. I've had one die on me (damaged cupholder track, nothing real interesting) and it's just not worth trying to find spare parts for something you can replace for $40. BTW, there's an interesting choice of terminology (squanderer = heat sink? Como se dice "heat sink" en espan~ol?) in there... actually a pretty cool word for it, though. /Brian
  • I knew this had to be *possible*; I never knew anyone had tried it, though...

    Unfortunately you can't just wire up a CD-ROM to a CD-RW without that pesky motherboard getting in the way :-)

    /Brian
  • Silly me, responding to my own post, but...

    It occurs to me -- they do have those low-profile (NLX?) cases out there; I'm typing on a computer that uses one right now. Get one of those, spray-paint it black, and you can fit it into your entertainment system. Alternately, just cram it into a plain old external slimline case and plug it in...

    /Brian
  • Not really -- "squander" means to waste something (usually money) in English, but "disipador" is directly cognate to "dissipate" which is what a heat sink does in English.

    But you may have come up with one of the cooler mistranslations I've ever seen; I like the idea of hooking up a "heat squanderer" to my hardware. It's quite poetic. (Besides, it's not like you can do anything useful with the excess heat anyway :-) )

    /Brian

  • [reasons why not to keep a /. mirror of sites]
    c) Its not the freshest information, the author could decide to revise the information. But the mirror might not reflect that.

    I know! We could always get the mirror site to update itself on a relatively speedy basis - say, a couple of hundred times a second or so - and then we could be sure the site was up to date! And since all the Slashdot users wouldn't be hitting the original site a couple of hundred times a sec...

    Um. Never mind.


    What, you expected a serious response?

    OK. As above, but with a slightly more sane update period. RAruler's other points are certainly pertinent and important to address - legality is an issue that won't go away, and deciding the optimal level of information to mirror is not one that can be automated easily, especially in terms of dynamic content (how many sites out there actually use a lot of the metadata initiatives around?). Still, a little care could go a long way towards making sure that some of the neat and nifty people that Slashdot tells us about every day don't get crushed under the pressure of their 15 minutes of fame.

  • Re:Anyone know of an IDE to CF converter? (Score:3)

    by yahwey ( 167049 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:37PM (#221337) Homepage
    In order to hook up CompactFlash to IDE, all you have to do is rearange the order of the wires in the IDE ribon cable. I assume that you could do it backwards too. You'll find instructions for IDE -> CF at http://wtarreau.free.fr/1u/v0-flash.html [wtarreau.free.fr] If you do it all backwards, you *might* be able to make it work.
  • I set up a complete mirror over at my site. [johncglass.com] Please feel free to use it as well.

  • Re:Pop goes the server (Score:3)

    by Tairan ( 167707 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @05:44PM (#221339) Homepage
    Mirror located at my site, as usual [johncglass.com]

  • umm, it's not exactly IN-DASH if you have a laptop in the passenger seat

    ---
  • Save the poor slashdotted site two page fetches :-p

    Computer Audio CD Car Player HOWTO [sorgonet.com]

  • Pop goes the server (Score:3)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:59PM (#221342) Homepage
    This is the best kind of online instruction -- well-illustrated, no guarantees, creative re-use
    ... and mirrored on several servers so that it can be read by all without the server collapsing.

    Oh, wait a minute... :-p

    Might be an idea to give the smaller sites a bit of warning before thrashing their servers into oblivion.
  • Nope, they can't. The FAQ explains why, and it's sort of too bad, but ... they can't. It comes up once in a while, would be cool. Oh well.

    simon
  • It's simple enough to buy one of the many MP3 players on the market that reads CDR/CDRWs... Hell, after looking at the cost of competing media, they're virtually free. +)
  • now think about drive your car with your genius netmouse (scroll buttons for gear changes) or your usb force feedback joystick...
  • why bother when google.com probably has it cached anyway.. 90% of sites i've not been able to access are cached at google.
  • Car CD players are usually built to withstand shock, whereas my CD-ROM drive tends to skip when jostled. Is there a way to dampen the shocks from pot-holes, etc. when using a CD-ROM drive in a car?

    This is a very valid reason to worry.

    Regular walkmans, for example have a bunch of ram built in as a buffer, so that if it skips, it waits while it plays data in the buffer. Typical walkmans nowadays hav something up to 30 seconds or 45 seconds worth of buffer. I also think that they are variable speed so that they can fill up the buffer fast, and then play of the buffer as needed. This has certainly been built into the car cd players.

    The second issue is the robustness of the units to take a beating due to vibrations. I think that CD Roms are more fragile than car CD Players, but this may be debatable. Certainly long term durability is an issue. How many times do you tap your computer with a rubber hammer while playing your favorite tunes? Would this even be wise?

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • I know it does more than 128, I believe I have some 192s it plays fine. I don't have any VBR, but IIRC a review (mp3.com or highwaymp3.com) mentioned that it plays it, but that the time counter is off (big whoop, IMHO)

    Of course, you could always hop over to a circuit city and check. I'm rather certain that the one I have is not the original 1.0, since certain things in the manual are different.
  • I just got the Kenwood MP8017 installed last Friday. The cat's meow. I looked at the 300$ Aiwa, but the Kenwood impressed me more.

    • If I use ISO9660 level 2, it reads the first 32 characters (of both the folder names and file names). Otherwise, 8.
    • ID3v1 tags. (it shows the track name, then scrolls over to the artist name, then starts over. Makes an impressive demo.)
    • Fairly easy to scroll folders. (there are basically only 5 buttons you need to navigate folders/tracks, and 4 of them are in a diamond configuration)
    • It reads my CD-RWs and CD-Rs.
    • Low bitrate not a problem, listened to 4 old radio shows yesterday.
    • Not one skip, and I live near some bad roads. Hell, my tape deck had problems with it. But it keeps playing and playing and playing.


    If you're at all interested, let me give a no-holds-barred thumbs up.

    One caveat. I went in expecting to pay a decent amount less than I did. 340$ for the player. $40 for Circuit City's 2-year warranty. 30$ to install (and that's with the free installation!). $450 total. And worth every penny.
  • cached at google? so how do i get to it then?

  • Re:Tips (Score:1)

    by rsd ( 194962 )
    It would be possible to use a microcontroller to send the play command to the IDE port, i'm just not sure how much of the bus you'd have to implement or how expensive it would end up being.

    well, you can do it with a cheap 8051 microcontroller.

    Take a look at Using an IDE Hard Drive with a 8051 Board and 82C55 Chip [pjrc.com] article at Paul's 8051 Code Library [pjrc.com].

    There is also a High Capacity MP3 player [pjrc.com]
  • The Diamond product is pretty cool. A 60-Gig mp3 jukebox in the dashboard! Drool! Now the real question, where can I get a ethernet card for my '82 Pinto?

    Steven
  • I know you are kidding, but considering the fact that installing MS-OSes is not always easy (think NT4) HOW-TO's on that subject might even be very useful. Now the installation works quite well most of the time, but optimizing it, and tweaking it to your needs helps. Correct partitioning (yes, even that is *very* usefull on a WinOS machine! Especially if you want to keep your data safe), ect.
    Explaining to joe-normal-user that all those icons in the icon tray *eat* memory and that if you don't need them you can kill them (Run/Services in registry), explanations of how to keep your start menu clean and small (removing README, docs, helpfiles which you can access from the program itself).
    Well now that I think of it, I should get started ;-) On the other hand, nobody who would *need* this stuff would ever think of searching and reading such a HOW-TO...
  • Don't get me wrong, I like NT4, and it installs very well. Just don't think that you can put in the CD and wait! That won't simply work, I've never seen a machine that you could install completely with all drivers wouthout surfing like a madman.

    Besides, you did ignore all other things I said (tweaking, partitioning, etc). I was not talking about soley the installation of the bare OS: I don't call that an installation, but raw material to work with.

    Besides, people call "the friend who claims to know everything" all the time, even for Windows 9x, and guess what: if *he* fucks up, they call me! Or go back to the shop where the will put in the restore-CD and charge big buck for it.

    And no, Linux is not ready for the broad public, and I never claimed that, did I?

  • I know, but you know what you are doing, don't you? Linux has the advantage that you can get into the config files with a bootdisk, repair your mess, and reboot. (Which saved my *ss many many times because in Linux i'm just a newbie!)
    With windows, forget that, it's in the registry anyway (Yes, I know, regedit works under command line and you can load .reg scripts). The only option is to reinstall, and best not over the old installation because risks of contamination of the problem is high.
    Also Windows tends to freak out on unknown hardware, but Linux just ignores it (the better approach IMHO)
    So technically, Linux never screwed for me because a reinstall was not needed, but it is just inherent to the way it works.

  • CD Player Link (Score:4)

    by TheLer ( 209287 ) <whittakt@csTOKYO.uri.edu minus city> on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @06:00PM (#221356)
    Heres [dhs.org] another example of reusing youre CDROM

    Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.
  • In this [mp3car.com] line of work there's also a dutch version [mp3car.nl].
  • Yeah, but what if I actually *want* to build/hack my own stuff? For example, you can buy a new car that will be perfectly reliable, but that doesn't stop car enthusiasts from buying old cars and parts and spending time and money fixing them up. You can buy an in-dash MP3 player that may be chaeaper than building one yourself. But to some there is a rush that you get when you repair/build something to like new quality. And I believe the geek factor is increased when you can say "I built it from scratch myself..."

  • Re:Slashdotted instantly (Score:3)

    by Da Web Guru ( 215458 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:06PM (#221359)
    Isn't it wierd how as soon as a good article pops up the links are instantly Slashdotted (and remain so for several hours)? Now I like Slashdot and all (I read it daily), but it's almost as if we (the devoted readers of Slashdot) are a swarm of locusts, feeding on the web site provider's bandwidth and server resources, suddenly attacking a server farm almost all at once, then we disappear almost as suddenly as we came, leaving a trail of overheated processors and worn out disk drives in our wake, often times confusing administrators and leaving them lost in a daze...
  • There is another potential problem to this if you were thinking of hooking it to a remote computer unit.

    Most older CD-ROM drives (not the really old ones w/ the proprietary interfaces), but the ones that use EIDE as an interface are restricted in bus length. I think the longest an EIDE cable is spec'd for is 18". You might be able to push it to 1 or 2 feet, but beyond that you'd get consistent errors.

    Now if someone was familiar with the EIDE bus, you might be able to hack an ad-hoc controller and make a crude interface for the player (w/ a cable no more than a foot or so), to tell the player to play, stop, pause and skip tracks, but outside of that, it wouldn't be very useful.

    And as others pointed out, vibration dampening might be a problem. Neat idea though.
  • Here's [darkness.tj] what I made a few months ago, using my CD-ROM drive, and a handful of components. It's simple, and works really well, and doesn't need any computer PSU's or Inverters or anything like that, since cars supply ~+13v anyway. The only trouble I've had is with the crossovers, but I'm going to build an active high-pass filter for the front speakers, instead of passive.

  • Hmmm.... (Score:3)

    by Omerna ( 241397 ) <clbrewer@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:15PM (#221371) Homepage
    I've seen someone mention the problem of skipping when going over bumps. One could easily just switch to a CD Player that already has skip protection (through a read ahead device). However, there has to be a way to stop this.

    I've seen someone mention putting it in foam or something like that... That might work, but wouldn't it still bounce a little? If the foam is even relatively stiff the player will just bounce with the car.

    What about using the foam in one of these pillows [ezboard.com] to cushion it. Also, put it in a case attached to two wires so it can swing back and forth when the car hits a bump... I saw cup holders like this once. The drink wouldn't spill because they swung back and forth and stayed level... at least most of the time.

    Hopefully those measures would stop most skipping.
    --------------------------------------

  • Don't need the computer, anyways... (Score:4)

    by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:57PM (#221372) Homepage
    I guess the good thing is that most computer cd-rom drives don't need to be attached to a computer to play CD's... simply hook up the power, and push play.

    Shock is definately a concern, but nothing a little creative mounting wouldn't overcome.

    Personally, however, I still like hooking up my MP3 player to the system instead... no shock concerns, easy to mix and match tunes, etc. If it wasn't for the sticker-shock on Flash cards, it'd be ideal.

    MadCow.

  • The street finds it's own use for things (Score:4)

    by Mall0 ( 252058 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @01:59PM (#221376)
    While this is a cool little hack, but if you are interested in going all the way to frankenstein mp3 decoding car audio system glory check out www.mp3car.com [mp3car.com]

  • Slashdotted instantly (Score:3)

    by blonde rser ( 253047 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:14PM (#221378) Homepage
    since its obvious little sites like this are going to slashdotted as soon as they are posted couldn't /. create its own mirror since we know /. can handle the load and the site probably isn't very big. Plus it would only have to be for a couple hours.
  • Now all I need is an old unused CD player. Geezh, were can I order one ?

  • best online instruction? (Score:3)

    by hyrdra ( 260687 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @11:15PM (#221380) Homepage Journal
    First, most all CD-ROM drives after 4x don't have a play button and won't automatically start playback when an audio CD is inserted.

    So this means you're going to need someway to send the IDE signal, which would probably involve, at least, a microcontroller although I'm not fully aware of the ATAPI spec and you may have to make the device completly physical (e.g. go through all the init routines) to even get to the point where you can send a command.

    Second, these drives, as mentioned don't have skip protection. Todays in dash CD players have read ahead of 45-60 seconds or more, because this is what it takes to get even marginal performance while driving over gravel in your SUV.

    Personally, I built an in-dash MP3/CD player using an old Sony VAIO 233 MHz system for my friend. The CD-ROM which came with the system was used, and in this case it already had mechanical skip protection. I used the LCD that came with it and bought a digital touch screen kit and connected this up the parallel port. To completly prevent skipping, I extracted the selected CD track to memory as it loads, at about +120 sec into playing buffer. Works very well. This was in a Jeep and he's told me he hasn't got it to skip. And yes, it runs Linux off an ATAFlash IDE card (no noise!).

    In reference to the original post, you don't have to be a N.A.S.A. engineer, all you need is a laptop and some time (a few weekends).

    By the time you're finished looking for your obstruficated CD-ROM and forcing the thing in your dash, you'd might as well been better purchasing a $165 car player as you'd be adding no addition functionality.
  • The site isn't slashdotted -- the rest of server just happens to be in rush hour traffic with its ROM right now =)

    --

  • patent this NOW (Score:3)

    by popular ( 301484 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @02:17PM (#221384) Homepage
    By no means am I an EE grad, student, or even an electronics hobbyist, so I very well could be wrong, but the hack seems simple enough, and the site is /.'ed, so I can't compare notes. You probably have a 12V DC circuit in your car, and The wire colors on CD Audio cables explain themselves... what do red and white mean in audio components? In electronics, what does black mean? There, you figured it out.

    This is something that is painfully obvious, although few, if any have actually done it before. With the right phrasing, you just might be able to pull off a patent on the idea.

    --

  • I'm sorry for my bad english (I'm spanish), but i looked "disipador" on the dictionary and found that funny word "squanderer". Yes, I mean a Heat sink. But then I can't remember that word. Isn't it a sinonym?

  • Emergency Mirror for the article (Score:5)

    by DrD8m ( 307736 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @04:16PM (#221389) Homepage
    I'm sorry, our server could not afford such traffic, here it's link to a little mirror for this article
    http://www.terra.es/personal/sorgocondenado/Comput erAudioCDCarPlayer/ [terra.es]
  • The irman [evation.com] is an example of a serial port dongle that understands RF remotes. Plenty of people make them, and they are quite common among people using full computers in their cars or PC/TV setups.

    As far as the LCD & GPS, both are commonly done. You'll find a wealth of resources at mp3car [mp3car.com] especially on the bulletin boards. They are an excellent resource for finding the best LCD screen.

    links for the href weary:
    http://www.evation.com/irman/
    http://www.mp3car.com/

  • My Aiwa CDC-MP3 has worked like a charm for 6 months. Some people have problems with them, but most don't.

    It would be hard for me to go back to a normal CD player now. I notice that there are now 4-5 different in-dash MP3 players in the new Crutchfield catalog. If I had to pick one, it would be the Sony, which I assume just came out or is coming soon. I miss the nice interface on my old Sony.

  • there was an elektor project a. 8-9 months ago about converting a CDROM drive into a standalone MP3 player

  • Tips (Score:4)

    by D4rkm1lk ( 450291 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @05:48PM (#221408)
    This site is good, but here's some even better tips:

    (I've been using an old CD-ROM in my car for ages, here's my experience)

    • there's no need to stuff around with heatsinks! Just mount the 7805 so that the back of it is firmly against either the CDROM's housing or a good piece of metal in the dash. This dissipates the heat well enough, and electrically there's no worries in a negative earth car. (almost all cars in the last 20 yrs.)
    • Not all CDROM's are created equal. Experiment with different drives - some are excellent! I've got a "Diamond Data" 12x, which actually seems to have a (small, only fraction of a second) anti-skip buffer, and you can see the disc rotating at 2x. It also has nice big rubber shockers inside!
    • "alternator whine", the enemy of any in-car electronics can be particularly bad for these. (you can tell if it's this because it only happens when the engine's on, and changes pitch with engine revs.) Use a capacator across the power supply, but there's no need for ridiculously big one like for stereos. If it's still too bad, use a coil as well, these are commonly available at car shops as "noise suppressors".
    • experiment with different bumps: most CDROM's are good at withstanding bumps in some directions and not others. Test yours on the bench first, using just the computer's power lead and headphones. figure out which bumps are worst. Then when you mount it in the car, try and allow for some padding in that direction.
    • security: I deliberatey removed the flip-down cover from where the tray comes out of. It still works just fine, but it looks like a detachable face unit without the face! (but let's face it, if someone does nick it, it's cheap to replace)

    • Mine has been happily working for about 2 years like this, and with some rags at the sides as padding it's better over the bumps than my friend's cheap car stereo.!

    IDEA: (for the enthusiastic, probably even a money-making idea): It would be possible to use a microcontroller to send the play command to the IDE port, i'm just not sure how much of the bus you'd have to implement or how expensive it would end up being.

    Good luck! (but be careful...that site describes what can happen)

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