Car-puter / GPS DIY Build-up

I think these are a great little unit but there significant limitations attached to these subnotebook platforms that seem to circle around the solid state drives.

Advantages of power reduction with a solid state drive are lost when it does not don’t have a memron D2 processor. Solid state drive allows it to boot quickly and makes it less susceptible to shock damage but it is permanently soldered to the board so can’t be swapped out

Biggest issue is solid state drives have a finite number of "writes" that can be made to them.

I think Asus have tried to address this with merging writable partition with a read-only recovery partition. This allows everything on the file system to be updated and still reset to factory defaults later by simply clearing the writable partition. Storage on the image I don’t think can be fully recovered. As an example if a software package is uninstalled, no space is freed, and if a package is updated it may simply double the space. This does not auger well for this thing having multiple applications.

I am hoping one day for a solution to this “finite number of writes with solid state drives. Have a very powerful mini ITX board boots quick smart off a slightly stripped down version of XP (using nlite) and I have to say I have had no problems with my note book HD in a pretty bump environment.

However this MB also has a Compact Flash on solder side that one day when something to more than just XPe (embedded) becomes available to reduce writes to the card, I will then utilize MB to its full Offroad Carputer potential.

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Originally Posted by cockie55

Biggest issue is solid state drives have a finite number of "writes" that can be made to them.

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This was and (to a larger extent if using cheap drives) can still be an issue but....... In the last 5-10 years the write cycles have increased from around 10-100k to about 1million, in better quality drives, (server stuff) you can now expect in the region of 2-5million. This coupled with the drives now speading data writes to different blocks, (not like a standard HDD that uses the next available) will likely see your drive out last your system.
This will of course vary on the quality of the drive.
*If you want to extend your HDD life reduce the XP swap file ;)

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Originally Posted by cockie55

As an example if a software package is uninstalled no space is freed,

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Have I misunderstood here?
Are you saying that if you uninstall a 10MB app. you won't get 10MB of disk space back?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cockie55

I think Asus have tried to address this with merging writable partition with a read-only recovery partition. This allows everything on the file system to be updated and still reset to factory defaults later by simply clearing the writable partition. Storage on the image I don’t think can be fully recovered. As an example if a software package is uninstalled, no space is freed, and if a package is updated it may simply double the space. This does not auger well for this thing having multiple applications.

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There was no recovery partition on my Eee. Recovery is carried out via a USB memory stick after installing the Linux OS & apps onto it via another PC. Or you can do it via external USB DVD and the supplied disk.

The above works after a complete repartitioning of the solid state drive (e.g after installing Windows).

Jon

It's been almost years since the last post on this subject, how are the carputers holding up? Any thoughts on what you have improved on?

Guess not then!

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Originally Posted by HangOver

Have I misunderstood here?
Are you saying that if you uninstall a 10MB app. you won't get 10MB of disk space back?

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????????????? :confused:

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Originally Posted by FXST01

Guess not then!

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i dont seem to get notifications, pretty random I just happened to notice you post.
Anyhow, the carputer held up pretty well considering.
I sold the 2 door a little while ago and the computer is still in it, it was working when sold.

I have plans to do something simmilar but this time im just going to take the easy option and use a laptop 12v powered and a remote mounted touch screen.

When I get around to it .............. ;)

Mine has held up extremely well having covered about 20,000kms of remote desert travel.

The screen is a 10.4" touch running windows XP. radio, music and destinator navigation all run through Centrafuse and OzExplorer runs straight off Windows. Reversing camera gives a great view of whats behind. It could also run my phone and engine diagnostics if I wanted but chose my trusty Scan Guage 2 and haven't hooked up the phone as I go away to get away from the bloody thing!

A 6 port USB hub handles all of the extras and with a blue tooth mouse, I don't need a keyboard as I can use the in computer one and mouse if needed.

Having all the music on the hard drive is great as it does away with CD's and then getting ruined and I can listen to 6 consecutive hours of Slim without having to do anything :D

More details here

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/members-ri...-build-18.html

It all looks great, but I wonder if you thought about using a Mac Mini? There are heaps of pages on google and vids on youtube of Mac Mini installations in cars.

Apologies if anyone else has suggested this, but I just spotted this thread and haven't even come close to reading it all.

Not a Mac person so I stayed with an XP based system. There are a surprisingly large number of car computer systems available. The probelm has been more with the software side. Centrafuse went into limbo for a while but seems to be back up and running again now.

I like the integration as it replaces the radio and CD player, is your reversing camera, navigation and phone if you want.

The only thing I have had trouble running through Centrafuse is OziExplorer as it conflicts with the Navigation for the GPS. There is a GPS splitter but I couldn't get it to work and it is no big deal for me as when I am in remote areas and using OziExplorer I am not using the Navigation anyway so I exit Centrafuse and run OziExplorer from Windows.

For me the entire exercise was about having a big screen for OziExplorer and the 10.4" touchscreen works great...you can actually see where you are headed:D