Thomas Brandon wrote:

> I wouldn't have thought a trackball was such a good thing for a car control
> system. Too much attention required.

The track ball I was thinking is actually in the shape of a pen with a lead
comming out the end, nice and small and easy to hide when your car is parked. I
agree that you shouldn't use it when you are driving, that's why I intend to use
playlists. Load up a playlist eg. to play one album or two and let it go or even
get your passenger to do it. You could add a couple of buttons (connected to the
comm port) to enable skipping songs etc (you can get a plugin for winamp to
enable you to do this)

> My old boss was at one stage planning to gaffa tape an IR keyboard to his
> steering wheel but was convinced by friends/family/complete strangers that
> he would (or at least should) get arrested for such a thing so you want to
> be careful about this when installing electronic devices in a car.
>

Thank god for that

> I also would have thought a system based on a 486 with ISA video and sound
> would have been cheaper than an AGP system and just as functional (although
> $180 ain't bad). For a start that MB will only have Slots not sockets so
> you'll need an adapter or a celeron or greater. Which IMHO is all a bit over
> the top if all you want is MP3 playback.
>

Hmmm, yep I agree a bit over the top, you could probably do with a 100Mhz pent
but trying to get a motherboard with everything on it of that vintage would be
difficult or atleast I haven't been able to find one. I'd prefere to get
everything on one board to make it more compact so it can easily fit under the
drivers seat

$180 for the motherboard
$150 for the processor
$300 aprox for an 8 gig HD
$60 for ram
$80 for the display
$? for the power supply
total $770 for the best part of it, this is a bit of money but if you compare it
to a CD stacker for you car the price seems a bit more acceptable pluss the fact
that you could have alot more albums to play and if it gets ripped off then you
don't loose any cd's (I've had that happen once before)

Regards
Stuart