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RangerPC Hardware After reading the tasks that I plan to use the PC for then I am sure that you now have a pretty good idea of the hardware that I plan to use with this system. I have been watching the news on nano-ITX motherboards for a while now and have postponed this project for long enough waiting for these boards to make it to the market. Since it looks like they are still a few months away, I am putting more attention on mini-ITX motherboards. These boards are approximately 6 3/4" square as opposed to the nano-ITX size of 5" square. As far as I know these are the smallest motherboards that are available today. Since space is very limited in my application these boards will have to work. The most demanding task that the PC will be performing at this time is DVD playback. As long as I have some sort of hardware MPEG2 decoding then using a 1GHz PC or even slower should not be a problem. Since this will also be a rarely used feature I don't want to go overboard to implement a function that won't get a lot of use. The motherboard will have most items built onboard in order to eliminate needing any expansion cards that would triple the size of the unit. All accessories not directly built into the motherboard will operate from USB. Since current limitation can be a problem with USB I will have to watch the power requirements of devices that will be USB. As far as memory is concerned I plan to use between 256mB to 512mB. This should be more than enough for the tasks that it will perform. Most of these tasks will be used one at a time anyways so the memory requirements won't be as demanding. Other items are: HDD, Slimline DVD/CD drive, Mouse, Keyboard, 7" Touchscreen LCD display, GPS module, Wirless card, TV/FM tuner, Microphone. I also plan to purchase a new Radio Bezel so that the display can be mounted to it but also allowing me to swap in the stock radio and bezel if I decide to sell the vehicle or leave the vehicle unattended for a period of time. |
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This file last modified 05/21/21 |