Hey All,

im new to the forum, but am currently running a car pc system in my car, (Ill get more to the specs on a different topic)

Just a quick question and point to bring to the board,

Startup: How can i make it quicker to startup??? Im not talking about loading windows, removing crap from the startup folder, i mean the speed of loading the computer! i currently have it set up so when i shutdown the car, the pc shuts down completely, (with of course small constant power for the internal clock and settings), but heres the thing, its all about speed, u want it, u want it now. Say you start the car, driving out of the garage, buy now it should already be loaded, so you can pick your destination on the gps before leaving the home, and not have to wait 5mins for it. The pc needds to be setup so its as quick as your average aftermarket head unit, or gps system. I've bin looking into leaving it constantly on sleep mode so itll start with a touch of the screen, but then of course there is the problem of running the battery low, as you have all discussed in other topics. Here is my answer to that, Buy an Optima Yellow top battery, its a deep cycle battery designed to be ran till its flat, when its flat, Charge the f***er up overnight!! and repeat process.

So can you see my problem, in short how can i get it to start within a 2 minute time window??


Look forward to future discussions, and having a browse through the work you have all put into your rides.
Will post more on my set up soon, any Q or Solutions just post em up here.

Cheers guys

have it hibernate, or use mac os x or vista which have far superior sleep than XP

the thing is,when the car is off the pc is off, when i turn the key to ACC and wait the pc turns on, if i then turn to ign, it restarts, (due to the temporary power cut out), how can i stop this and get it to stay on. The other masssive problem i need to cover is, when the car stalls it also turns the PC off, but upon restarting the car, the pc does not start!! i have made away around it, by installing a reset switch in the constant power, but you can only imagin the hassles and dramas involved in having to do that each time, is there anyway around this? I like being able to use the pc whilst the engine is not running, but use it 95% of the time when it is. i just dont wanna have this hassle every time the car stalls. my other main drama is just the speed of startup.

With hibernate mode, how do i configure it so that when i turn the key off/stall, it will automatically hibernate? and then start back up upon turning the car on?

Well a decent computer with nothing running on it (just OS and your gps program) should boot up in no time at all.

With some nice fast ram and a decent cpu, shouldn't take any longer than 20-30 seconds... Can you wait that long?

What about the stall factor? I love my car pc, but it is just so unreliable, i need for it to be a more stable system.

Also, as for hooking up power to 7" Touch screens, ive got it hooked up and running and configured, but just curious as to how you guys hooked up power to the screen, where abouts did you source it from.

Cheers

get a DC-DC power supply instead of the inverter -that will fix the problems

I was just reading up on the dc-dc power supply, problem is, mine already is. I've wired the car pc up to the car, ie. the acc is literally to the acc of the ignition of the car, the constant to the battery, and the gnd, is well grounded. MY pc runs purely off of 12v no inverter needed.

A proper car PC controller will not reset the computer when you start the engine - it waits about 10 seconds of accessory power off before it shuts down.

to start faster, have fewer programs/device drivers installed. Or use the Hibernate function - this is also supported in a proper controller.

alternatively, use Linux. There are plenty of varieties which have 'instant start' functionality.

If you already have the proper controller, maybe check the bios settings for power-on/S3 setting.

Im running Winxp on a 2.4Ghz P4 (512MB Ram) + 7200 RPM HDD.
Takes 15 (+/-2) seconds to boot up from hibernate (completely off, not suspended). Takes about 18 to cold boot (completely off, not hibernated).

To stop programs from starting when you first boot up (helps with loading time) type msconfig in the 'Run' box.

Select the 'Startup' tab and remove things you dont need. Anti-virus, any scans, quicktime, msn etc etc.

edit; oh and 512mb ram is MINIMUM for windows xp, if you want it running smooth.

CarPC uses very little memory resources - so 512 is actually quite good.
Additionally, when hibernating, all memory contents must be written to disk (ie: the size of your physical memory, not just what is being used).. the less RAM you have, the less contents are written, the faster the hibernate and restore processes are.

also, set the network card IP address to static, otherwise DHCP failure holds things up by a few seconds.

also make sure dont have all the windows xp accesory's like high detail background, just go back to classic
as well in bios you can make it so it only boots to the harddrive and doesnt wait to test for floopy's and cd's and other hdd's

I am not very literate with the computer side as most of you guys are(Thats why I hired a computer IC in my workshop). With the problem of rebooting when you stall the car its an easy fix. On SOME cars on the ign there is a wire that is live on acc ign and start. If so hook your acc to this then when you dump the clutch and stall and everyone stires you you when you restart the computer still sees acc power. If this is not there use a time delay relay on the acc power supply. If this is is not able to be done please tell me, so I know why not for the future.

Thanks

rather than using the ignition for the acessories switch on the PSU, run a new wire from the battery to the PSU with a switch inbetween... jump in the car, flick the switch, start the car! won't matter if you stall or anything, it will still be on until you flick that switch again!

If you want your pc to start up quicker and your cpu,ram is all fast get a 10000rpm raptor harddrive
hope this helps

The whole problem IS the power supply.
I am using a M2 power supply (google - its a common one).

These are available on Ebay.

The power supply will NOT hibernate the computer unless the power is lost for 5 seconds (this time can be changed also). So if you stall, and re-start, your pc will keep running.



When you start your car, the power supply will wake your PC from hibernation, which is quicker than a cold boot.



Its the way to go.

I found that by removing all of the searching for new HDD's etc in BIOS, startup time improved.



Just go into BIOS and change the Secondary IDE etc etc from "Auto" to "None".



This way BIOS is not wasting time looking for drives that don't exist.



Panda