I have been thinking about installing a computer in my car. I want to hook this up to my system (amps, subs, etc.) and mount a monitor in the dash. This way I can play music straight from the computer's hard drive, and also watch movies. I have a few general questions...
How to power it? Should I just get a power inverter?
I know that it is bad for a computer to just cut the power to it thus turning it off without shutting down first. So this tells me that anytime that I turn off my ignition I'll have to first shut down my computer. Is there any way around this?
Will the hard drive skip when I go over bumps?
A friend of mine did this in his car he installed an extra batt so his power wouldnt be an issue he used a power invertor but not one of the cheap cig. lighter ones he bought the ones used in conversion vans for the tv vcr systems. . . he then made sure that it was wired up to the batts hard wired not through the ignition system so when he turned his car off it didnt make a difference bc it still had power obviously it eats power quicker this way but his comp had some sort of a power saver mode where it "goes to sleep" kind of a stand by sort of thing he hasnt had any probs as long as he remebers to put it on power saver mode. . . ..hope this helps in some way
also you will need somekind of line driver to amp up the signal and maybe a x-over if you amps don't have them built in. soundcards don't have alot of outout voltage.