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building a mini-itx carputer

M

Mike Chambers

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Sep 2, 2006
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i got a steal on this mini-itx motherboard on ebay for $50.

http://www.idotpc.com/thestore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=2&idproduct=167

it has a VIA C3 800MHz Processor and the whole board is 17cm x 17cm

anybody ever mess around with mini-itx? it's pretty cool stuff. i am planning on putting this stuff in my car after i get a dash-mount 8" touchscreen monitor, and a small wireless keyboard. i was going to use it for GPS, wifi, and other cool stuff. i've already got MS streets and trips 07 with the GPS receiver which works awesome when i use it on my laptop.
 
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Don't kill yourself by missing those brake lights in front of you!! It's been my experience that anything that takes your eyes off the road is bad news. I ended up driving along a nice rocky shoulder only days ago. I was looking at something inside the car for about 2 seconds, just long enough to drift off the payment. Out here in Nevada, you read about "one car rollovers" all the time. "One person killed, thrown from vehicle".
 
chuckcmagee said:
Don't kill yourself by missing those brake lights in front of you!! It's been my experience that anything that takes your eyes off the road is bad news. I ended up driving along a nice rocky shoulder only days ago. I was looking at something inside the car for about 2 seconds, just long enough to drift off the payment. Out here in Nevada, you read about "one car rollovers" all the time. "One person killed, thrown from vehicle".
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yeah, definately have to exercise caution. but if i haven't died from reaching over and using a laptop sitting in the passenger seat yet i should be ok with a monitor mounted on the dash :)

oh and i ordered a compact flash to IDE adapter and an 8 GB CF card to use as a hard drive. a real hard drive in a car would probably fail in a few months from driving around.
 
I have a Flex ATX mobo with the same processor. It'll pull off XP ok with enough memory, but Windows 2k worked much better. Don't expect a speed demon but they are very low thermal output and don't get very hot at all. Aim for a gig of ram though, that'll help alot..
 
lol, i can see it now. a nice expensive car pc setup with a useless DOS prompt on the LCD :)

i'd like to use debian or fedora core on it, but i wanted to use MS streets and trips 2007 so it'll have to have XP.

i just purchased this picoPSU power supply on ebay for $28 too... it's nice, tiniest ATX psu there is and it runs off of a single 12V DC input.

image2.jpg


of course, i'll need to add some sort of voltage regulator and maybe a capacitor since car voltage can generally vary between about 9 and 15 volts. plus it has to be able to stay unaffected by engine starts.
 
of course, i'll need to add some sort of voltage regulator and maybe a capacitor since car voltage can generally vary between about 9 and 15 volts. plus it has to be able to stay unaffected by engine starts.
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Is that little board not designed to take that sort of input voltage range? I'd personally (and without reading the datasheet) be inclined to risk the $28 and pop the board straight onto the battery supply (fused though of course!) Generally little switchers like that are quite tolerant of relatively big input voltage ranges. and I'd bet that this one was designed specifically for using a vehicle battery.
If you DO decide that you want to pre-regulate the supply you have a bit of a job on your hands. most simple DC-DC converters either like to boost or buck the supply, yours needs to do both, so you need to either wind a transformer suitable for a switching supply for boosting the lowest possible input voltage at highest current demand up to 12V, then ensure that it can be throttled back sufficiently to still provide 12V at the highest input volts, on minimum current. Or alternatively use 2 DC-DC converters in series one to boost the voltage to > max input volts in all circumstances, and another to knock it back down to 12V again.
personally .... check the datasheet!
 
It depends on which picoPSU model Mike got:

Standard picoPSU 80 and 120: Input requirements 12V regulated, min 2A, max 10A (load dependent). Over-voltage shutdown will occur at ~13-13.5V.

picoPSU 60-WI: Input requirements 6-26V unregulated, min 2A, max 10A
picoPSU 80-WI-32: Input requirements 12-32V unregulated, min 2A, max 10A
picoPSU 120-WI-25: Input requirements 12-25V unregulated, min 2A, max 10A

The three WI models all have orange red connectors.​
 
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Furthermore, there is a brand new car PC power supply from the same manufacturer:

M3 ATX 125W, 6-24V input

Certainly, there is a great price difference between $28 and $80, but if one is aiming at getting something to work out of the box, it may be worth it.
 
nige the hippy said:
Is that little board not designed to take that sort of input voltage range? I'd personally (and without reading the datasheet) be inclined to risk the $28 and pop the board straight onto the battery supply (fused though of course!) Generally little switchers like that are quite tolerant of relatively big input voltage ranges. and I'd bet that this one was designed specifically for using a vehicle battery.
If you DO decide that you want to pre-regulate the supply you have a bit of a job on your hands. most simple DC-DC converters either like to boost or buck the supply, yours needs to do both, so you need to either wind a transformer suitable for a switching supply for boosting the lowest possible input voltage at highest current demand up to 12V, then ensure that it can be throttled back sufficiently to still provide 12V at the highest input volts, on minimum current. Or alternatively use 2 DC-DC converters in series one to boost the voltage to > max input volts in all circumstances, and another to knock it back down to 12V again.
personally .... check the datasheet!
Click to expand...

hmm, so the $1.50 3-pin 12 VDC regulator at radio shack and the 1 farad capacitor in my basement isn't all i need eh? i'm no electronic engineer or anything, didn't think i'd need any more.

maybe i should have bought something that was built for car use... i got the 80 watt picoPSU that requires a regulated input.
 
can you swap it?
seriously anything that will regulate the sort of power even a tiny motherboard takes sufficiently, is probably going to cost more than the difference.
If you can get a low-drop out 12V regulator, boost it's output capability with a power transistor on a heatsink (expect to have to cope with up to 30 watts of dissipation) pop a 10 A diode and a fuse in series with the input and before the 1F capacitor....
Oh here's the diagram.....


and you might be in with a fighting chance.
 

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  • voltage reg.pdf
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cool, I have a pre-production version of that very board sitting on my desk at work right now... havnt picked it up to even play with it yet. =/
 
my picoPSU came in today, looks like i got the 120 watt version which is good. i thought i had ordered the 80 watt. maybe they screwed up the shipment? oh well i'm not complaining!
 
there was some sort of problem with the people who were going to send me the motherboard i ordered, like they had to backorder the item even though they had put it up on ebay like they had it in stock. i told them to cancel the order and they refunded me.

i decided to get a faster board anyway, so i just put in an order somewhere else for a VIA EPIA-LN10000EG w/VIA Eden 1.0GHz Fanless.

better board. faster CPU, and this one has SATA2 and DDR2. :eek:nfire:

and get this, they had a special deal on it to add a 512 MB DRR2 chip for only 99 cents, wtf! that's damn cheap ram! i could have gotten a 1 GB chip for $9.99 but i figured i dont need more than 512 MB.
 
I was mistaken, its not that exact board, the one I have is smaller I think, mine is 12cm X 12cm. Its also only an engineering sample and doesnt apear functional... I think its about to end up in the circular in bin.
 
yup thats a nano-itx.

have you guys seen those new picoITX boards?? they're 10cm x 7.2 cm! thats just nuts.
 
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