A thought...PC in a car

[Kalle Pihlajasaari]

Hi Arnaldo,

> I'm thinking, instead of going the 68hc11 route, using a pc.  Instead of
> building a a/d and d/a board, use two parallel ports.  That would give me
> 8 ins and 8 outs.  Timing would be resolved by the computer, hell, 386/486
> motherboards are cheap.
> 
> Question 1: Am I crazy? Anyone see an inherent flaw in all of this?

Too expensive in production but otherwise pretty ok, also got lots of
hardware in your computer that may cause it to glitch a car but not a 
spreadsheet such as timer alarm interrrupt, 24 hout interrupt, parity error
crash and other such.

Takes a significant amount of time to boot even from frlash drive (a must).

> Question 2: I need a good power supply to give me +12,+5,-5,-12. Should I 
> pull the car's power, use a 12/24 volt transformer, then get a couple of
> voltage regulators to give the voltages I need? Car voltage lines are 
> extremely noisy, any ideas on how to clean the signal?

There are PC104 form factor PC in all flavours and you can get for US$ ~200
a PC104 powesupply from the local AMPRO agent (third party product) that takes
8 .. 30 V DC in and gives you the required voltages for the PC card.

You will then need a flash disk or a ROM card and then a ADC DAC card
and you shoyuld have a Computer you can use, I expect you will not be the 
first to have done it.

> Question 3: Any suggestions, ideas, or people interested?

Sounds like fun, over kill for me, Just want to add mapped ignition to my
Alfa with Dellorto 4 Barrel Carbs.

Cheers
-- 
Kalle Pihlajasaari     kalle at data.co.za
Interface Products     Box 15775, Doornfontein, 2028, South Africa
+27 (11) 402-7750      Fax: +27 (11) 402-7751