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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Ultimate Automotive Computer Installation 294

Posted by pudge from the i-have-seen-the-future-and-it-is-good dept.
ErnstKompressor writes "I came across a story detailing an awesome car mod out of the Czech Republic. The author undertook what must be the most impressive exercise in computer integration I have ever seen, installing an extensive Mac system with custom Cocoa software controlling nearly every aspect of a 1993 Tatra 613. On-board systems monitoring, navigation, entertainment, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, plus much more, are all rolled into a tight, extensible, package. Check it out."
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Ultimate Automotive Computer Installation More

Ultimate Automotive Computer Installation

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:39AM (#8065992)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Oh yeah. A Tatra ...

      Of course, you can integrate lots of hardware with those!
      Why didn't I think of it myself?

    • Thanks for the mirror.

      First, what a strange looking car. I like boxy looking cars, but there seems to be something disproportional about this one. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it.

      Secondly, with all of the technology and money put inot this car, what's up with the car cell phone from the 80's? Where's the bluetooth integrated wireless mumbo jumbo?

      Or is that cell phone modded to dispense Pez or joints or Jolt? That'd be cool...

  • I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

    by somethinghollow ( 530478 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:39AM (#8065993) Homepage Journal
    I wonder at what point this becomes over-kill. I wonder was it worth all the work (e.g. is it that useful).

    On the "bright side", however, I can purchase a Toyota Prius and get a lot of the same functionality without all the work (and with 60+ miles per gallon)... of course, then I can't brag I have a Mac in my car and can't add things to it... but you get the picture.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dyte ( 733558 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:57AM (#8066201)
      I wonder at what point this becomes over-kill.
      When he started thinking about doing it, it became over-kill.

      It's a hobby (very cool). Hobbies don't have to be practical or usefull.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)

      by segmond ( 34052 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:15AM (#8066375)
      You can purchase a Toyota Prius, good for you, I can't, he probably can't too. How much do you think he earns in his country? He didn't do this for bragging about a Mac in his car. This guy has a very neat hack, read the article, look at the pictures. He gave very smart reasons for why he did the things he did.

      http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93970& ci d=8066041

      "First I wanted to completely seal the motherboard case, but later I found this was not really a good idea, particularly due to the changes in temperature and the air volume inside the case. To fix this, I have installed two Gore-Tex valves on the case. These valves are used in automotive industry to allow air circulation in the headlight units while keeping the water on the outside."

      "All the custom software is written in Cocoa. The main application was designed and written by Ondra Eada, I have used this opportunity to learn Objective C from him and later written most of the plug-ins."

      As you can seen, not another guy trying to get on slashdot, from the hacks, he is quite smarter than the average slashdot reader.

      • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sebi ( 152185 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:25AM (#8066459)

        How much do you think he earns in his country?
        Since he is actually working in the Netherlands my guess is quite a bit. I read the article yesterday (it was linked from macslash) and he stated that he got the Tatra because of a lifelong fascination for the maker. Apparently his father was a driver for the leading class during communist years and took his little boy along in a Tatra.

        What I really liked about the article that there was no justification for using a Mac. Seems like he is simply a fan who never even considered using anything else. That should set an example for many past and future flamewars on Slashdot.

      • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

        by martingunnarsson ( 590268 ) <martin&snarl-up,com> on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:52AM (#8066748) Homepage
        I think the parent has missed the whole concept of, well, hack-value. If you have a lot of money, you can buy almost anything. But what's that worth compared to actually building the stuff yourself? Kudos to this guy and all the other "hackers" out there.

        • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

          by milkman_matt ( 593465 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @01:29PM (#8067828)
          I think the parent has missed the whole concept of, well, hack-value. If you have a lot of money, you can buy almost anything. But what's that worth compared to actually building the stuff yourself? Kudos to this guy and all the other "hackers" out there.

          Too true, Yeah, i've got a custom, stock looking TV and DVD in my truck [kotich.com](Please be gentle with my server, also, the DVD player has been upgraded and moved, that part was cheesy :( ) However, a tv/dvd in a car/truck these days is a nickle a dozen, it's standard equipment almost, true mine's custom and I did it myself, so I am kinda proud, but shit, mine didn't require a fraction of the effort or work or knowledge that this guy put in. My tv doesn't show the temperature in various parts of my car, it doesn't show gas consumption, it doesn't do GPS, have a clock, tell me how many more miles I can go on the amount of gas I have, or have trip-o-meters, it's not customizable to that degree.. I hear the new BMWs have pretty advanced computers, but I doubt they can do this... This is an extremely cool hack, it looks totally custom, and it's more powerful than any computer system you can buy as an option as your car. I agree, Kudos to this guy, shit i'm jealous.

          -matt

      • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)

        by C10H14N2 ( 640033 )
        Ah, yes, the "in his country" argument.

        The per capita GNP of the Czech Republic is about US$15,000. It is NOT a third world country, no matter how much anyone who has experienced their public water system may try to tell you. The Czech economy is rather elitist, especially now that Vaclav Klaus is running the show--he has stated openly that he thinks that maybe ten percent of the population should have a tertiary education. Thus, if you are an engineer, you're probably doing fine by American standards. You

    • Re:I wonder (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Phrack ( 9361 )
      Does it have to be? Sometimes the journey is the point...

    • I wonder at what point this becomes over-kill. I wonder was it worth all the work (e.g. is it that useful).

      Seeing as this is a Russian car, I was hoping I had some witty In Soviet Russia joke handy... but I dont. Anyhow, This car was a creme de la creme top of the line luxury automobile. Modding a car is only worth it if (1) the mods are tasteful (i.e. not rice-boy) and (2) if the car is worth it. Is it worth it to spend $5000 modifying a '94 Honda Civic that's only worth $3k? No. Is it worth it to

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      This is a terrific piece of work. I hope you enjoy your Prius, but you should be comparing this guy to a Toyota research engineer, not yourself.

      Hewlett Packard likes to talk about how they started in a garage. It's people like this who carry on that spirit and who own the future, not consumers or the HP of today.

  • Remote access (Score:4, Funny)

    by cwernli ( 18353 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:41AM (#8066019) Homepage
    Unfortunately the site's already /.ed, so I can't verify if it has remote access - I always wanted to ssh into a car and fire up my favourite text editor at 60 mph :-)

    • You need to hang around auto research labs more often. This is a common event when dealing with instrumented R&D cars. Of course, you have to be very careful since, unlike this car, many of these vehicles have data flowing in both directions. Accidentally spiking the steering actuator is bad. Very bad.

  • Shouldn't that be... (Score:4, Funny)

    by imsmith ( 239784 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:42AM (#8066034)
    Czech it out?

    • Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Shouldn't that be...Czech it out?

      Hahahahaha good one! See, he's making a funny because of the similarity of the sounds of Czech and check. Woo hoo, hang on, let me catch my breath before I finish this post!
      OK, there. Thanks. What makes this post so great is that Nobody Before in the History of the Planet has thought of that funny joke! Hahahahahaha oh man there I go again...

      • Uh-oh, here comes your reward for noticing that... One day, a man from the Czech Republic came to visit his friend in New York. When asked what he wanted to see, the visitor replied, "I would like to see one of the zoos in America." To his delight, the New Yorker took him to the Bronx Zoo. They were touring the zoo, and standing in front of the gorilla cage, when one of the gorillas busted out of the cage and swallowed the Czech whole. Shocked, his friend from New York quickly called over the zoo keeper
    • Shouldn't that be ... Czech it out?

      No, then the RIAA would storm you for stealing from John Mellencamp. Only Springsteen is allowed to do that.

      • No, then the RIAA would storm you for stealing from John Mellencamp. Only Springsteen is allowed to do that.

        But that's okay, because it's obvious that John Mellencamp stole all his stuff from Johnny Cougar anyway.

  • COPY OF TEXT : Before Slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)

    by MountainMan101 ( 714389 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:42AM (#8066041)
    Few words about Tatra

    Although not as known as many other car manufacturers, Tatra is actually the second oldest automobile company in the world (with only Daimler being older). It was established in 19th century and throughout the years came with many innovations, that helped to change many things in the industry. Just one example, probably quite surprising: the famous VW Beetle was "inspired" by certain streamline Tatra cars (V570, T97) so much, that Volkswagen had to pay few millions of D-Marks to Tatra as a compensation for patent violations. During 1930 and 1940, Tatra created several amazing cars, like T77, T87, T97 and trucks like T111. After the communist revolution in 1948, Tatra specialized mostly in truck production and the passenger cars were only manufactured in very limited numbers to be used by ruling elite. T603 was produced between 1958 and 1975 and the T613 (designed by Vignale) was produced between 1974 and 1996.

    A picture for those who still think Jaguar is a big car :-) - Click on any photo to get hi-res in new window!

    I must admit, I have loved Tatra's since I was a little boy. My father used to work as chaffeur for one of local bosses and I spent a lot of time on the rear seat of a T603 when I was three or four years old. Later, as a student I owned one of T603s myself. For few years I move to more practical cars for few years (Honda Civic and Volvo 480 to be exact), but what my Dutch friends call a Tatra-virus was still deep inside me. So when I stared to work in Holland and needed a comfortable car for almost-monthly trips to Czech republic, Tatra was very high on my list of choices. After two or three months I found one in good condition and I did not hesitate a minute.

    Exterior picture of T613-4 Mi Long

    My car is one of later T613s, produced in summer 1993 for Frankfurt auto show (and not actually used much after that). It is a T613-4Mi Long version (M=power steering, i=multi-point injection, long = wheelbase 3150mm instead of standard 3000mm). A sedan, larger than Mercedes Benz S-Klasse, with 3.5 litre V8 air cooled engine (200HP, 300 NM), mounted above the rear axle. It was originally an "Elektronik" version, which means all the controls were fully digital with several computers (including one for voice output) and parts communicating with each other using CAN-bus. (Hi, Volvo guys, your S80 was by far not the first one, would you correct your advertising materials please?) This equipment was later removed (by factory) and replaced by more traditional standard wiring, but at the moment I have decided to buy it, I was already sure that a computer must come back. And so it did - I started to work on my installation in summer 2002 and by Christmas, I had a working installation.

    Why?

    The basic two reasons that led me to the installation of the computer were the replacement of CD changer by an MP3 player and a navigation solution, based on Route 66 application. I am pretty sure anyone who needs to make 1000 km trips every month or has ever been lost in Copenhagen can understand these two reasons :-) During the installation, I also added some more functions (communication with engine controller, on-board micrcontroller for basic telemetric data). Of course I could simply buy a head unit that supports MP3 playback and a dedicated navigation hardware. However I was not very excited about the prospect of spending several thousands euro for a dedicated hardware and then wait for the manufacturer to release the maps I needed (Czech republic in particular). Use of standard computer gives me much more freedom in the configuration of the system and potential upgrades - both software and hardware.

    First time in the Tatra - still in the original case (although without all the plastic)

    The first idea was to use an LCD iMac, and built it into the original dashboard. The base unit was supposed to be placed within the dashboard and the display with its holder outside. This idea had two basic flaws: iMac's 1

  • A bientot, M. Server! (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:43AM (#8066054) Homepage
    [mycar:~] bob% ignition
    Connecting to ignition...Connection refused: too many users. Please try again later.
    [mycar:~] bob% ignition
    Connecting to ignition...Connection refused: too many users. Please try again later.
    [mycar:~] bob% ignition
    Connecting to ignition...Connection refused: too many users. Please try again later.

    Damn you, Slashdot...

  • Ultimate Taxi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stuffduff ( 681819 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:43AM (#8066055) Journal
    There's a taxi in Aspin Colorado called The Ultimate Taxi [ultimatetaxi.com]. He's been around for years and just keeps getting better.

  • Great for Traffic Jams (Score:5, Funny)

    by zgwortz962 ( 641208 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:43AM (#8066056)
    Now *that* has got to be a great car to have in traffic jams. With just one click, Expose will move all the other cars out of your way...

  • Requisite commentary... (Score:5, Funny)

    by griffjon ( 14945 ) <`GriffJon' `at' `gmail.com'> on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:44AM (#8066067) Homepage Journal
    With wi-fi, does that mean you can see a beowulf cluster of these on any sufficiently packed freeway?

    I'd post something of content, but the site is already severely /.ed...

  • Dude, where's my... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:45AM (#8066086)
    ...web server?

  • Clever, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by addie ( 470476 )
    this kind of thing really frightens me. I play a game with my friends when we're driving down the local freeway... If a car is going slower than 100 km/h or is weaving a little bit, we bet on whether or not the driver is on a cell phone. The result? More often that not.

    Do we need more distractions? Cars are for getting from A - B, and having the option to check email, the news, stock reports and hockey scores is just adding more distractions. Don't tell me that it's fine as long as the driver doesn't

    • Re:Clever, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by segmond ( 34052 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:11AM (#8066336)
      Why does it frighten you? Did you even read the article? If you did, can you tell us what is so distracting? Everything there is an article about a car with a tech modification, someone like you is bound to post a lame reply like this just cuz you know that people who didn't read will bound to agree.

      Go read the article.
      http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?si d=93970&ci d=8066041

      • No, I didn't read it because it was slashdotted. But regardless of the mod itself, I feel my point does stand on how cars are moving to more and more distracting features.

        Thanks for the blunt, cold response.
        • > No, I didn't read it because it was slashdotted. But regardless of the mod
          > itself, I feel my point does stand on how cars are moving to more and more
          > distracting features.

          Assuming your car is newer than a 1920, or its not a VW, then you already HAVE a computer in your car that controls all of these things.
          It's just as hidden away not in the pasenger compartment as this guys computer is.

          If your going to blame this guy for being distracted, your equally as guilty for doing the same thing with t
          • If your going to blame this guy for being distracted, your equally as guilty for doing the same thing with the factory computer in your own car.

            Do you work for the bush administration? I swear I've hard this dogma before :)

    • If you're really driving for long stretches then something like that could be pretty good option to have. If your work is still 48hours of driving away are you really going to wait till then? using while driving of course hazardous as fuck, but you know, it's possible to have these 'pauses' when driving long distances(and then having some form of entertainment is really useful, you're not always sleepy - heck you might want to have more pauses just because you can watch that episode of buffy right there in
    • If a car is going slower than 100 km/h or is weaving a little bit, we bet on whether or not the driver is on a cell phone. The result? More often that not.

      Picture this: You're cruising down the interstate, doing maybe 5 over the limit when a school bus sized SUV blasts by you. There is a woman in the driver's seat -- almost invariably these ought-to-require-commercial-licenses vehicles are driven by females -- and she's holding a cellphone to her ear with one hand & is facing backwards slapping the mu

    • You are not a parent (Score:5, Informative)

      by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @12:49PM (#8067356)
      Ha! Compare the distractions of kids in the back watching SpongeBob to kids in the back who are *NOT* watching SpongeBob.

      You should get a tinge of fear every time you get close to a mini-van and realize how much the driver may be distracted in a car people can stand up and walk around in. I never used to until I owned one. I'm back to a station wagon now where people stay where you put them.

  • Time for some bad unix puns? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @10:55AM (#8066184) Homepage
    I bet he really shelled out for that system. Mind you , all the software should help him thread his way through traffic driven by the usual zombies
    and the GPS will help with those confusing forks() in the road which can be very awk-ward sometimes. I don't imagine his passengers will have normal regular expression when they get in the car for the first time
    but I'm sure he'll mktime() to explain it all to them.
  • Gives a whole new(old) meaning to the term: "It crashed on me."
  • ...czech.

  • Racing Sim (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PurdueGraphicsMan ( 722107 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:05AM (#8066273) Homepage Journal
    Now, the first thing I thought of when I heard this was Racing Simulation. If he could find an open field and put in his favorite racing sim he could actually drive his car around and use his steering wheel as the controller. That would be sweet. Of course you'd want to have a stationary mode as well. It'd probably be better than most of the force feedback wheels.

  • Cocoa in the "embedded" world? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MurrayTodd ( 92102 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:07AM (#8066293) Homepage
    It sounds like a brilliant idea. I'm almost surprised I'd never thought of that before. I'm always hearing discussion of which OS to use for "embedded" projects (in that I mean things outside the standard ordinary PC computer.)

    Ever since coming out as the basis for the NeXT computer over 15 years ago, the objective-c based NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP/Cocoa framework has been touted as one of the most amazingly powerful that a person can develop in. In the old NeXT days I remember hearing the [informal] statement that one programmer up to speed with NeXTSTEP could do the work of about 10 normal programmers. I took that with a grain of salt until I started trying to write some simple apps for the first time in OS X's cocoa.

    It is so easy and refreshing in ways I couldn't express with worlds! Writing anything in C++ anymore makes me want to pull my hair out. Sadly, it [objective-c & Cocoa] is still rather obscure. But it would be such a wonderful world if we got to see a renaissance? FINALLY the GNUStep project is beginning to approach a level of usability. If embedded applications started to become a reality...

    Oh, that's about as silly a pipe dream as hoping Howard Dean becomes President!

    • Actually, I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, or at least a related topic: what object-oriented language works best in an embedded environment?

      My first answer is "none", as embedded systems usually have more stringent requirements for speed and size. Also, most embedded programmers I know cannot do object-oriented programming well, even without the constraints I just described. (I could relate quite a few horror stories about that EE who just learned C++ and was let loose upon an unsuspect

      • >> So has anyone thought of using Obj-C in an embedded system? Is it a viable, attractive alternative?

        Objective-C would not be a good language for embedded development. Embedded applications need as much static type checking and validation as possible. Embedded developers don't even like using function pointers, let alone dynamic dispatching.

        I agree that it is a nice language, but I wouldn't want to receive a selector not bound exception when I need to turn right in my car...
    • Actually, there is some guy who forked out of the Gnustep project with the goal of building an embedded version of the OpenStep API, his project is called mGSTEP [pcmagic.net]. Judging from the frequent updates on his project, it seems quite active.

  • Been done. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Corvus9 ( 300802 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:07AM (#8066302)
    Lots of techies have decked out their cars with computer-controlled GPS, audio, entertainment, trip planning, and such.

    For example, some guy named Wally Rodriguez built a similar Mac-based system [upstairsefx.com].

  • iPod (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dimer0 ( 461593 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:12AM (#8066347)
    I don't care about all this stuff.. I just want a real audio deck that you can plug your ipod into. (Sorta like inserting a cartridge, just slam the ipod into the device and have it 'dock' with the stereo)..

    Now THAT is the ultimate car audio solution. Ahh

    • Re:iPod (Score:3, Informative)

      by tgd ( 2822 )
      Alpine's coming out with one later this year. You don't slam it into the head unit, but when you plug the iPod in, its control and display get transferred to the head unit.

  • It's not Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by MattGWU ( 86623 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:14AM (#8066364)
    He just drove into a tunnel.

  • What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by spidergoat2 ( 715962 )
    Any computer installed in a car that doesn't access the cars onboard diagnostic computer seems like a waste. Realtime data from the car should be available to the operator.

  • New modus operandi for thieves? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by djeaux ( 620938 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:22AM (#8066434) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean that a smart thief no longer needs to smash in a window? Will they now be able to wirelessly hack the Mac & have the car just unlock its doors?

    Speaking of hacking automobile computers, my lowly 2003 GMC SLE pickup has an "entertainment center" that has some Driver Information Center functions that I can't display, because I didn't pay extra for the deluxe SLT package (which has the control buttons). I think it would be cool if someone fixed up a "hardware hack" that would let me add a keypad so I could call up all the additional data on the dashboard display...

  • Did anyone else notice that it takes 1 minute 20 seconds to boot his car? Granted there are cities where you can get booted in under a minute for illegal parking, but I digress...

    Total time for me to plug in my iPod and hit play: 10 secs. In-dash GPS? Turns on with the car.

    I know that this is a minor nitpick, and it's truly an admirable geek project. He may have even saved a couple bucks from buying off the shelf. Does this really work any better than the store bought equivalents?

  • wow! (Score:2, Funny)

    by deviantonline ( 542095 )
    wow, that is one neat setup! i can only imagine how much time he devoted to that!

    never heard of those cars before either - the things that one can learn from slashdot!

  • Must admit that I find that the motherboard housing is done with more taste than some of the PC mods I have seen around recently. - Just my 5c

  • See More @ mp3car.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:37AM (#8066602) Homepage Journal
    This guy's setup is pretty nicely done. It's the first decent Macintosh one I've seen -- it's all in the software, and this fellow has done a quality job.

    There are some really impressive installations out there. You can see a lot of them on the mp3car.com finished project board [mp3car.com]. In case anyone is curious, this is my installation [mp3car.com].

    ~GoRK

  • Does he park his car in an airport?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Botchka ( 589180 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:47AM (#8066693)
    gah...i got nuttin..

  • I said it before... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BeProf ( 597697 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:47AM (#8066696)
    I'll say it again.

    Am I the only person left in the world who:
    • uses his cell-phone just for talking to people?
    • uses his car just to get from A to B?
    • I've got you one better, Prof:

      I don't have a cell-phone, so I don't even use one to talk to people.

      My car is strictly a "get from point A to point B" device, though. Just me, my car, and a pile of old cassette tapes. No CD, no DVD, no XM, no GPS, just AM/FM/cassette goodness.
  • Great install. I give this carmac project 9 out of 10.

    only -1 for the position of the reset buttons (upper left towards the open space in the trunk). They need to be on the dash, or enclosed in the trunk.

    -brady

    • -1 for the position of the reset buttons (upper left towards the open space in the trunk). They need to be on the dash, or enclosed in the trunk.

      Nah... modern macs are close to bulletproof. I'm running 10.2.6 on a G4/400 (similar to this guy) and I honestly don't think I've hit the reset button since I installed, despite the machine being on 24/7, usually running a good dozen apps.

      • Doh - just realised, your point about putting them on the dash was about not hitting them accidentally, not "ease of access"... my apologies. Although I'd still say that on these machines the best solution would probably be to disconnect the reset buttons entirely.

  • ATI Remote Wonder Mac Edition (Score:5, Informative)

    by CaptCanuk ( 245649 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @11:51AM (#8066734) Journal
    I'd have suggested mounting the Remote Wonder [ati.com] instead of those other buttons. It's RF based with amazing range and the Mac Software is excellent and customizable down to the app. Plus, if he had made a small mount for it on the dashboard, it could be passed around to the people in the backseats to control the audio as well.

  • Big deal (Score:3, Funny)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @01:00PM (#8067490) Homepage
    I refuse to take seriously any car computer system that doesn't drive the car.
  • "'Mac-ing' out one's car"

  • Linux-based similar setup in Jetta (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikl ( 2371 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @01:08PM (#8067558)
    Chris Bergeron did very much the same thing in his VW Jetta. He lives in Georgia, US. He's shown it at several southeast-area cons.

    http://www.dashpc.com/ [dashpc.com]

  • case mod? (Score:4, Funny)

    by theCat ( 36907 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @03:22PM (#8069142) Journal
    So does this qualify as a modded car, or as a masterful case mod? As a car, it's a great hack, Detroit should steal it. But if this is a case mod it shows l33t m4d skilz. Drive this baby to the next LAN party, watch the gurls got nuts; "Hey baby, let's do some lagers in the back of my computer."

  • engine (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phriedom ( 561200 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @04:48PM (#8070153)
    Didn't anyone else notice he said the car had an air-cooled V8 over the rear wheels?

    I couldn't believe I was reading that correctly, and had to re-read it 4 times. That is far more strange than his custom computer.

    • Re:engine (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JirkaJirout ( 744708 )
      Yeah, the engine is quite weird, but I really like it and the strange placement (gearbox stretches under the middle rear seat) actually results in very good handling charcteristics of the car. Here are few pictures of T613 engine (not mine)

      http://aek4470.finalnet.cz/pics/jjopr/P1010066.J PG
      http://aek4470.finalnet.cz/pics/oprava/P1010006. JP G
      http://aek4470.finalnet.cz/pics/bylo/P1010025.J PG

  • mp3car.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by goofballs ( 585077 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @06:26PM (#8071160)
    lots of much more impressive installs at mp3car.com [mp3car.com]

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