Enterprise-class Car Audio

tbray writes "Dave Edmondson wanted to play MP3's in his car; his solution was perhaps a bit over the top. But then, why wouldn't you want an E450 in your trunk? Check the pix."

Comments

Mirror

[infonick]

How did i predict this would be nessesary?

http://members.shaw.ca/infonic/icece/

Re:Mirror

[Joey Patterson]

Looks like your mirror is /.'ed. Can anyone loan this guy a spare E40?

Re:Mirror

[infonick]

fixed it. it was relying on resources from the original page.

Re:Mirror

[gfody]

I'm in the S-E 4-double-oh
Sitting real low, stick in the flo', oh
The hoe want me to come swoop
Take her for a ride in my blue Lex Luthor (Lex Luth-ah)
But the bitch ain't got no gas fetti (gas fetti)
So I burnt her like Fast Freddy (Fast Freddy)
Hit me on the first when your mail has come
And maybe we can go to the mall or somethin (to the mall or somethin)

Heavy ass shit for the mob -- for the mob
When I make a zillion I resign -- I resign
I'm realer than a hundred dollar bill with the line across
When Christmas come around ask Santa Claus
Santa do you know E-40?
Bet you that nigga say "That's my homey!"
We used to perv grind curb trip to my grandma
Kahlua with them brandy almost every day

Cardiac is cool, but I'm on gin (on gin)
Santa bought me, a new Mac-10 (yeah)

Re:Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to everyone else, he is NOT paying for that bandwidth. It's his ISPs webspace.

So? He's paying for his ISP service and as part of that service, they provide web space. I've never seen a bandwidth limit on an ISP-side website in any TOS, so its the ISP's problem.

Re:Mirror

[JWSmythe]

Mirror Here

These mirrors are automatic, and still considered beta, so if something's missing, live with it. :)

Re:Mirror

[PhillyFreak]

This guy ever heard of an Ipod?

Apparently the E450 wasn't running the webserver..

[GPLDAN]

...either that or his car is only hooked up at 128k. Cause it's slashdotted... anyone have a mirror?

early post'd!

[1337baloni]

i have nothing to say other than thats extremly cool

Re:early post'd!

[Rick the Red]

Cool? It's nuts. For a fraction of the cost you could save a lot of trunk space and just velcro an iPod to your dash.

Re:early post'd!

[jhobbs]

RTFA, current investment: $0.00

Re:early post'd!

[Nogami_Saeko]

I'm forced to agree.

Don't get me wrong, it IS a nice hack, but not terribly practical for anyone else.

N.

Re:early post'd!

[AndyRobinson]

I'm guessing the running costs are going to be a bit steep though.

According to the specs, it weighs over 200lbs and draws 1.6KW of power.

Good job oil prices are starting to come down, ain't it?

Bah...

[josh3736]

Cue the jokes about the server getting slashdotted already... FreeCache

Re:Bah...

[Anonymous Coward]

how many times do people have to say that freecache won't work for web pages like this?

Re:Bah...

[Fizzlewhiff]

They don't have to say it won't work. They usually just demonstrate it by posting a link.

You're not missing much. It is just a E450 in the back of a station wagon. First time he has to replace a SCSI drive it will cost more than his car.

Re:Bah...

[Trejkaz]

I wonder whether it's possible to write a Firefox extension which adds a "View through FreeCache" option to the context menu of links.

Re:Bah...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

A second hand SCSI drive is relatively cheap, last I bought a 10k drive, it was $50 for a 9GB. SCAs are even cheaper since the need for an adaptor for anything that doesn't have a backplane ups the cost in other systems. It looks like E450 has one.

An e450 is massive stupid overkill though, that is, if that system is actually for real in that minivan. Nothing done there couldn't be done on a single CPU with a single stick of memory on a single hard drive.

Re:Bah...

[josh3736]

An e450 is massive stupid overkill though, that is, if that system is actually for real in that minivan. Nothing done there couldn't be done on a single CPU with a single stick of memory on a single hard drive.

He did say that he wants to hook up a few Sun Ray 150s to it to serve up to 3 simultainous video streams stored on its HD. Although a E450 is still probably overkill.

He said that the 3 Rays for watching video were so his kids would have something to do during long trips. Unfortunately, with that behemoth in the trunk, he's not gonna be able to fit any luggage in there to go on long trips.

Whoops.

Re:Bah...

[zakezuke]

A second hand SCSI drive is relatively cheap, last I bought a 10k drive, it was $50 for a 9GB. SCAs are even cheaper since the need for an adaptor for anything that doesn't have a backplane ups the cost in other systems. It looks like E450 has one.

I'm not going to discount the cheep scsi drives... they are indeed cool. But we are talking shell script driven MP3 here, no real need for 10k drives nor SCSI when a DVD+r will do. $100 for the drive to do dvd(-/+)r9, and we are talking 8.5gig/disc. We are talking $15/disk presently, but that is far better then any used scsi drive as far as cost/meg.

But if we were to not talk about the DVD-/+R9 and stick to the more common DVD-/+R, we are talking 4.7gig/disc@about $2.00 a pop and a nice indash DVD player. Or if you really want more in the way of tracks at your fingertips, then a nice 6-10disc auto changer. Far more space effective then a stack of 3.5inch HDs.

Shoulda hosted his web site on it...

[jarich]

cuz it died w/out the E450! ;)

Re:Shoulda hosted his web site on it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha! Oh my god! That's SO FUNNY.

No, really! That's SO FUNNY I CAN'T BELIEVE IT.

Fridge

[rd4tech]

His solution is way over the top but...
The software used is very simple at the moment, nothing more than an rc script that plays random tracks from the mp3 archive stored in the ~80G /export/mp3 filesystem. That filesystem is constructed by concatenating a bunch of 9G SCSI disks (the root filesystem is mirrored across a similar set of disks)

It it possible to use just a regular 100-200GB x few disks with this box? I mean, as soon as you have a fridge in your car for the purpose of listening music (comapred to portable mp3 player), you might as well go megalomaniac and stash it with 1TB hard drive space.

Oh yes, on related notes, can he wash his picnic dishes in it? Does it keep beer cold? It looks like a funny kitchen appliance.

Re:Fridge

[rd4tech]

I posted about 10th and there weren't any simmilar messages. Can someone explain to me WHY redundant?

Re:Fridge

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean one of these ??

Re:Fridge

[lysacor]

But do you realize how much 100-200 gig SCSI drives cost? It would almost defeat the purpose of even setting it up, because the overall cost of it would be about half of the cost of a decent used car, the proportion of storage cost to cost of vehicle would not be very balanced, overall this solution is better, and when it comes to video, well, unfortunately doing any kind of video work is going to come at the cost of space, but the cost currently is too high in that particular solution.

Nice thought though, it would work that way if the interfaces were IDE... but for a server like this SCSI is truly the only way to go.

Re:Fridge

[Triumph The Insult C]

But do you realize how much 100-200 gig SCSI drives cost? It would almost defeat the purpose of even setting it up ...

let's rephrase this some ...

But do you realize how much an E450 costs? It would almost defeat the purpose of even setting it up

Re:Fridge

[lysacor]

initial cost of the e450 was considered a zero cost, which means he must have got it off-hand or something, donated hardware is a beautiful thing ;)

Re:Fridge

[Spyffe]

E4500s (E450 but better) can be had for cheap. I got one (8x400MHz/4MB$, 4GB RAM) for $1600.

This is not an insignificant cost, but if one looks out one can pick up lots of good stuff at reasonable prices.

Re:Fridge

[Octorian]

I'll definitely vouch for that one. Of course the coolest part is that the components for an E4500 can be had (ok, on eBay) for MUCH cheaper than the components for an E450.

because

[justforaday]

But then, why wouldn't you want an E450 in your trunk?

for one simple reason...because i don't have a car (you insensitive clod). and i certainly don't want an E450 in the, ummm, "trunk" that i do have...

Kirk and the Enterprise stereo system

[Viking5150]

The only Enterprise class stereo system I want to hear about is the one Kirk used when scoring with all the green alien babes. ;-)

Re:Kirk and the Enterprise stereo system

[pr0nbot]

OT... There was a funny anecdote in some Star Trek memoir I read about the green aliens. The SFX team were painting the chicks green, but whenever the developed film came back it wasn't green enough. So they'd up the green in the paint and do it again.

After a few rounds of this they went to the guys developing the film and they were like, "What?! It took us HOURS to correct the green tint off your film!"

Re:Kirk and the Enterprise stereo system

[iantri]

I've heard this too.. this site (burn, AOL, burn!) has more info..

Re:Kirk and the Enterprise stereo system

[proj_2501]

"Later during the filming, Ms.Oliver felt very fatigued, and a doctor was summoned to give her a vitamin shot. Unfortunately, no one told the doctor that she's in full makeup. The doctor knocked on the makeup room of Ms.Oliver, and was greeted by a fully GREEN woman! It took the poor doctor five minutes to calm down and administer the shot he was called for."

a vitamin shot... right...

Okay, I laughed

[daviddennis]

But where'd he get power for this thing? I would think it would require massive alternator upgrades for it to work, but I see nothing of the kind on his page. The only hint is that the inverter link goes to a page suggesting that it needs 30v power, while I thought car power was universally 12v.

I can see this solution for a motor home where a generator can be available, but not a minivan.

This seems like something that must have not cost much to do, or he would have done better than that crummy cassette adapter. That implies that standard power must have worked (?).

Strange.

D

Re:Okay, I laughed

[josh3736]

The system arrived with three power supplies and, though it's clear that this is good for reliability, the space taken by one of them proved convenient to store the power inverter necessary to get from the in-car 12V supply back to the 230V required by the system. It's possible that I might build an alternative plug-in power supply unit that didn't bother with the inverter, but that's a project for another day.

I'd just hate to forget to turn it off when you get out of the car.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[bergeron76]

I too smell a rat. I'd like to see more pictures of the user interface, or at least the audio system integration.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[OverlordQ]

From the page:
The system arrived with three power supplies and, though it's clear that this is good for reliability, the space taken by one of them proved convenient to store the power inverter necessary to get from the in-car 12V supply back to the 230V required by the system.

And from the inverter page:

Provides 230V AC output from standard cigarette lighter plug

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Anonymous Coward]

The E450 requires 240V, and can draw 18 Amps maximum. That's 4600 Watts. 6.2 Horsepower. That means that he would need 384 Amp alternator @ 12 volts (at maxumim, mind you, he dosen't state a nominal load), to make this thing run, let alone what the car normally takes.

I think it's bullshit. He'd have to use some very heavy duty welding cable to haul that much juice from the alternator to the inverter.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[josh3736]

• He said there is no UI -- it's just a script that picks a song randomly from the collection. (He plans on mounting a Sun Ray 150 to the dashboard for playback control.)
• The audio system inegration consists of plugging the soundcard's speaker out into one of those cassette tape adaptors. Yikes on the sound quality...

Re:Okay, I laughed

[haroldK]

But where'd he get power for this thing? I would think it would require massive alternator upgrades for it to work, but I see nothing of the kind on his page. The only hint is that the inverter link goes to a page suggesting that it needs 30v power, while I thought car power was universally 12v.

30A does not equal 30V. A cigarette lighter probably isn't good enough for the full rating of this invertor (mine, for instance is on a 20A fuse along with the interior lights and stereo), but it's possible to tie in to the alternator output directly.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the specs page says the power inverter will supply only 300 watts--using a 30A alternator. That's about the requirement of the average power-user desktop (with perhaps a few disks).

Definitely BS.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[WhiteBandit]

I'd just hate to forget to turn it off when you get out of the car.

Not to worry! It has a built in feature that automatically turns itself off after about 3 seconds!

(also known as the time to drain your battery)

If you notice though, there is plenty of space on the other side of the trunk. Which is perfect for the companion gas powered generator!

Re:Okay, I laughed

[lysacor]

well considering that the maximum wattage that is generated by the power supplies is only in the case that the server is running theoretically at full load and with every bay in the server full, it is quite easy to get a decent 600-1000w or so inverter for the car, but yes an alternator overhaul or parallel battery in tandem with the whole electrical system could help in that if it were necessary, I am sure he took into consideration the overall power draw.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you can figure that this thing uses, at most, about 600W of power. People routinely install power amplifiers in their cars that are rated at 600+W of OUTPUT power without upgrading their alternators. I installed 3 amplifiers in a '93 Ford Escort (totaling 800W output) without upgrading the alternator.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Chagrin]

E450 doesn't *require* 240V.

But yeah, I kinda doubt he installed 2 gauge copper myself.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Anonymous Coward]

Power amplifier? What the fuck is that--and is it related to a flux capacitor?

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the slick way to do it would be to bypass the power suplies all together, and build a switching power supply with 12v input, that would get by the ~8% loss that the inverters likely caused...

It would certianly be a little bit cooler...But what do I know?

Re:Okay, I laughed

[zentu]

Actually, a car has a default 14V altenator, but a 12V battery (you need to be able to charge it, and since you are rectifing an AC current to DC with Diodes, you lose some voltage with conversion.)

That is supposed to change in the next 10 years for all cars to a 42V altenator, and a 36V battery (three times the power)(10 years is the estimate until all the cheap POS that people by new will conform to this standard, it is supposed to start in luxary cars in the next 2 or 3).

Re:Okay, I laughed

[morcheeba]

Reminds me of the time I went to the RV show. They had the front of the RV pulled out and you could see the engine. I thought, wow, that's only a little bigger than my car engine... but I don't see the driveshaft and the ability to pull it out on rails is a neat trick for easy servicing - I'd like to see how it's done. Then I see the monster cables in the back and realize that the generator for this vehicle is bigger than my engine.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[igrp]

This did strike me as a little strange, too.

Going by the pictures, the guy drives either a newer model Volkswagen Passat Wagon or a VW Golf Variant import model (unlikely). And at least, the 2003 and later Passats can be ordered with a 24V system instead of the stock 12V system - and that's straight from the factory. They can even have an optional electric outlet (think cigarette lighter) in the trunk.

This still sounds a little weird though.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[grimarr]

Those are maximum power numbers. E450s can run on 120V, and all the ones I've seen did so. One of my customers ran one off a 700VA cheap UPS. It wasn't fully-loaded, by any means, but it did have 4 processors, 2GB RAM, and 4 disks. My calculations based on the manual were that it needed about 580W. That's a big inverter, but not outrageous.

Re:Okay, I laughed

[Patrick]

The E450 requires 240V, and can draw 18 Amps maximum.

According to Sun's page, the E450 had dual-redundant 605W power supplies, drawing a combined max of 1664W. That's about 13.9A of power drawn on 120V (US) lines or 7.2A of power on 230V (European) lines. Or about 140A on your car's 12V cigarette lighter.

That's 4600 Watts. 6.2 Horsepower.

No, it's not. You're multiplying US current by European voltage. Sun's own page says the peak power input is 1664W, and the peak power output is 1210W. Under normal load, it's probably half that.

That's still a whole lot of juice to pull through the 10A-20A fuse that typically protects your cigarette lighter. It's also 5+ times as much as the cheap-ass 300W-peak inverter he links to can provide.

So the story is quite probably crap, but not because the Sun draws 4600W (it doesn't) or because the alternator would have trouble with an 800W load. The alternator would probably handle that fine, but the cigarette lighter and inverter would not.

That would be great for when

[RLiegh]

you're stuck in rush hour traffic... assuming you can't telecommute, of course.

Re:That would be great for when

[ChipMonk]

And if you do come to a total stop in traffic, just hook it up to the car's antenna and find a hot spot. Voila! Instant portable office!

Re:That would be great for when

[0racle]

With enough power to serve an entire department.

This goes way beyond 'over the top' right to 'absolutely stupid's' front door. There's a reason you put a plain vanilla $200 pos in the trunk of your car, that being if your car gets stolen, its a lot less of a loss. For instance on EBay you can find a used E450 for US $1,299.00. This guy just took a valuable system, it would be very easy to sell, and pre-packaged it in a nice steal-able box. I almost hope it drives off.

Re:That would be great for when

[Anonymous Coward]

...a nice stealable box that is:

a) More valuable than the computer (I hope)

b) More likely to be dumped by the braindead doped up hippy kids that nick the car

Been there done that...

[Anonymous Coward]

www.mp3car.com

did this myself about 2 years ago. had a little compaq deskpro system with an 40gig drive in it. ran windows 98, winamp, some X-10 wireless remote stuff.

memories of bye gone days

[quakemeister]

this server reminds me of my time during the colo/5pagepowerpoint=$5MVC/weneedaNetASAP days and suns *highly* optimistic
"we put the DOT in .COM"
advertising in the late 90s. dont know what street value for one of these is today but sheesh, putting one in the car? that borders on sacriligious - call the SUN police! wait, they fired them all!

Re:memories of bye gone days

[Octorian]

I still prefer Sun's older (and probably revitilized) tagline...

"The Network Is the Computer"

Seriously, understanding this phrase makes it a lot easier to figure out why older Solaris installs seemed lacking in some areas if you didn't have services like NIS and bootparams running out there on your network.

Power consumption

[eltoyoboyo]

I did not notice how much he said about battery life on a car-powered 230vac computer system. But you probably do not want to be playing the music without the engine running...(Not that you could hear the engine over the sound of the E450 anyway)

Re:Power consumption

[Roskolnikov]

You can run a 450 off of 120 VAC, some were sold as 'workstations' My biggest concern isn't the power consumption, its the heat soak, a E450 is my idea of a winter basement heater; and they are *not* quiet by any standards.

Here's an idea...

[Joey Patterson]

Use wget to download the Internet onto the E40 each night, then you'd be able to avoid traffic problems in more ways than one when on the road.

trunk space

[Anonymous Coward]

The size of the E450 would cut deeply into the space for bodies.

Re:trunk space

[morcheeba]

The size of the E450 would cut deeply into the space for bodies. ...especially in an accident! The thing not only isn't secured, but its on wheels!

p.s. I'm smelling a hoax. Not that it's impossible, but I was looking for photographic proof beyond what it would look like when you're just merely transporting an old server and though it would be funny if...

Re:trunk space

[morcheeba]

of the two pages, only this one shows evidence... of something. I'd love to see more details, or how he keeps it from rolling around.

Re:trunk space

[elmegil]

The 450 does have locks on the wheels.

Not that they'd likely work on any rough surfaces, but maybe he doesn't offroad much?

Re:trunk space

[morcheeba]

yeah, but those won't keep it from falling over when making a quick left turn. Maybe the trunk-area lid would help, but I doubt it would be strong enough to cope with the weight of that server.

Re:trunk space

[elmegil]

Good point. A buddy of mine I sent the story too also noted that in an accident, an E450 would be a real liability bouncing around inside your SUV....

Re:trunk space

[morcheeba]

I just loaded my server (like the stock version of this case) and my 21" trinitron into the car. The CRT gets a belt, the server is held in place by reclining the passenger seat. As long as I stay horizontal, I think I'll be fine in an accident.

Simple idea

[Turn-X Alphonse]

MP3 player and portable speakers. Cost is ALOT less and also portable, funny how that works huh? :P

Re:Simple idea

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

If you read the article carefully, you would have noticed that it cost him a whopping $0. For that much, how can you go wrong? It may not be the wootenest system ever, but its definitely neato.

Re:Simple idea

[AKnightCowboy]

If you read the article carefully, you would have noticed that it cost him a whopping $0. For that much, how can you go wrong? It may not be the wootenest system ever, but its definitely neato.

He could've sold it on eBay and bought at least a half dozen brand new iPods. On the other hand, it does pain me to see that the e450s we bought about 4 years ago for $38,000 are now going for $2000. We should've bought a Mac as they hold their resale value better.

Re:Simple idea

[ocelotbob]

But in a year and a half, when those spiffy ipods are all victims of dead, nonchangeable batteries, his e450 will still be humming along, serving up tunes.

Reasons...

[genixia]

But then, why wouldn't you want an E450 in your trunk?

Because I'd arrive at my destination before it had finised the memory check.

On the positive side, my car would have that cool whoosh sound like Kitt in Knight Rider.

Re:Reasons...

[SolidiusRock]

Now if you could just add the AI and LEDs to the front of the minivan, you're set.

Re:Reasons...

[hutkey]

may be it could improve the centre of gravity of the car

Re:Reasons...

[JWSmythe]

That thing weighs 205 pounds, according to Sun's site. It should be noticable when he's driving around. I guess if you don't mind the truck listing to the left all the time, and worrying about hitting speed bumps too hard, it's ok. I get all paranoid about hitting speed bumps with my car when I have servers in the back, and they aren't even turned on. :)

I'd think it would make more sense to have a cheap Pentium machine running Solaris x86 or Linux, than that beast.

But hey, it got him on Slashdot. If it had been a little box, it would have never made it up here. :)

Maybe he lives in Dayton, Ohio...

[k4_pacific]

...and steals from the RTA.

Heat from the... Sun

[MankyD]

Wouldn't the heat from letting the car set out on a sunny day have horrendous effects on the computer? Cars can become virtual solar ovens on a hot day. How does one deal with cooling?

Re:Heat from the... Sun

[jrockway]

My server is in a hot attic and it's not dead yet. Heat that's hot to you isn't hot to the computer. It could be 130F in there, but the CPU doesn't care. It's still in spec.

Re:Heat from the... Sun

[AnonymousKev]

Unless he's driving north of the Artic circle, I think that heat would be a problem. At my last job, we had an E450 inside a server closet. During the summer, the cheap landlord started shutting the building A/C off over the weekend. By Saturday, the E450 had heated the closet up enough to cause it to shutdown.

The next week, we left the server room door open. It lasted until Sunday before shutting down.

The week after that, we left the server door open and set a fan in the doorway to pull air out of the server closet. That worked until August (this was Texas). By that time, enough of the other tenet's goldfish and plants had died, the landlord started leaving the A/C on over the weekends.

MiniPC

[Saint Stephen]

It sounds like all he has is an 80GB HD, and it serves up files.

Couldn't an ultra tiny machine do this?

What a waste.

Re:MiniPC

[lukewarmfusion]

Not at all! I have a G5 cluster powering my custom PVR system, built a windmill to run the light on my front porch, and I recently installed a small nuclear power plant in my shed so I could power the lawn sprinkler system.

Overkill? Nah. We Americans like power!

Re:MiniPC

[Trejkaz]

Yeah, but you see he didn't want to spend any money.

Re:MiniPC

[ashayh]

Couldn't an ultra tiny machine do this?
You're right. The ultra tiny machine is running his web server.

Re:MiniPC

[KingOfBLASH]

It sounds like all he has is an 80GB HD, and it serves up files. Couldn't an ultra tiny machine do this?

If you RTFA you would know that one of the reasons he needed a Sun E450 was because sometimes when he was on vacation / on the road he'd need to check whether or not an upgrade / security fix / bugfix would fsck his system, or do a number of other things you can do when you have an E450 running Oracle in your trunk and the ability to play with it that you just can't with a lap top running x86 Solaris. Of course, this logic sounds like he just wanted a reason to write off an E450 for personal use, but, hey, if it's his company / money, good for him...

Re:MiniPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh,

My sentiments exactly. Just about any decent laptop could do this and more.

Not only that, but laptop components are more forgiving for the mobile lifestyle in the car, whereas disks inside an E-450 and other components in general wouldn't take to a bumpy road very well.

Also, it seems that it would take for years to get the thing to spin up... who wants to wait for 5 - 10 minutes for music capability ( imagine with full diagnostics being on.. even worse then ).

Interesting solution, completely impractical.

Re:MiniPC

[selderrr]

you mean, like this tiny machine ?

Not geeky enough I guess

Re:MiniPC

[Octorian]

True, but there are plenty of smaller and more reasonable sized Sun machines that would be a heck of a lot more practical (and physically robust) for this sort of application. Of course they probably would cost him a lot more "out of pocket" money than this free E450 he picked up.

Psshhhhht... that's nothing

[devilsammo]

I've got ASCI White in the back of my Suburban. Sam

Site comes up for me

[JohnnyComeLately]

I've shaken my head at PCs in a car, and some other oddities. This car, though, takes the cake. I'm not sure I'd really want to do this, even if I could. Enterprise servers aren't made for that vibration, and I've seen what a smoked power supply goes for (right after corporate decided to "save money" by dropping the warranties). Even with WiFi, Bluetooth, or wi-flavor of the month, you're just wasting resources. You might as well be in a Lambroghini Diablo, parked in traffic on the 5 in LA.

Re:Site comes up for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though it's an "E"450, Sun classifies these as workgroup servers, not enterprise servers, which makes a tenfold difference when it comes to pricing support.

And on ebay e450 parts can be had for cheap.

Re:Site comes up for me

[Octorian]

Actually, eBay parts for the EXX00 "enterprise servers" are a heck of a lot cheaper on eBay than parts for an E450.

It is one of those oddities, due to market conditions, where you find a few things that are uber-expensive on vendor sites, but uber-cheap on eBay. Some that I've observed:

EXX00 components
Fibre Channel stuff
FDDI stuff (ok, useful a few years ago when I had systems where I could get a free FDDI card, but 100Mbit ethernet cost $$$ and was hard to find)

Re:Site comes up for me

[Octorian]

Yeah, if I really wanted to do this, a Netra would be much better suited to the task. You can even get those with DC power supplies, so you'd only need a DC-DC converter. Of course it would cost "him" more money.

Re:Site comes up for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Lambroghini Diablo??? Where do you mount the E450????

Obligatory

[Chunky-Spinach]

He should of used this to host his website instead...

Borrowed from the guy's forum

[jeffkjo1]

Oh, I can just see it now...
"Dad, I'm sick of this song"
"Ok, son, just use your terminal to telnet into the e450 and modify the rc script to exclude that song"
"Can't we just get one of those dvd players like Jimmy has?"
"No. Use the supercomputer. You need to learn solaris."

Re:Borrowed from the guy's forum

[QEDog]

?Ok, son, just use your terminal to telnet into the e450 and modify the rc script to exclude that song?
"telnet? telnet? telnet"" Dad? ssh!"

Re:Borrowed from the guy's forum

[JWSmythe]

People still use telnet to get to servers? Wow.

Re:Borrowed from the guy's forum

[wik]

Unless he's using wireless, why can't he? It's not as if there are war drivers trying to out-geek him by sniffing his packets.

Re:Borrowed from the guy's forum

[dildatron]

Yes, we still use telnet. Get over it. When you are in a company with 100k employees, you don't always get to pick or have the power to decide "gee, I think i will switch the 20,000 servers we have to ssh instead of telnet".

Google cache

[markbo]

The omniscient google cache:

Slashdot This!

Re:Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Slashdot this!

We're getting close to slashdotting it. The page has been "loading" for over two minutes, and it's still not done. (No, it's not my connection.)

Slashdot got trolled.

[jared_hanson]

I think slashdot just got trolled. An excerpt from his page as reasons for doing this:


-multiple processors to ensure that mp3 decode is not interrupted by other process activity,

-good internal storage capacity, including the ability to take advantage of software RAID for reliability,

-large memory for good caching of tunes being played,

-easily expandable to allow for future projects,

-excellent support for Solaris 10, so that I can test bug-fixes, etc. while on the road if necessary. This also means that there is wide application availability (Oracle, great Java tools, etc.)


Does anyone who knows anything about MP3s think you need large or multiple processors to handle the task? Do you need massive memory to cache the songs? No on both counts.

Plus, the pictures on the site look like he just set his Sun server in the back of his SUV and snapped a couple photographs. No details on the hookup to the sound system at all.

If any story ever showed the ineptitude of Slashdot editors, this would be it.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[BoneFlower]

If I had a system like that lying around, I'd seriously contemplate something this insane simply "because I can"

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[lars_boegild_thomsen]

I just wonder what will happen when the guys at Oracle hear about this. I've seen some weird licensing schemes from those guys - but I can't wait to see $100/horsepower or something like that.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[UserChrisCanter4]

/. Got trolled?? Hell no. The editors knew this was a fake.

Wait 'till this guy sees his bandwidth bill.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[Politas]

Not to mention the fact that it's still sitting on its castors, so if he takes a hard left turn, It'll roll around the back.

It's a joke. Laugh and move on.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone who knows anything about MP3s think you need large or multiple processors to handle the task?

Do you know how much crap Solaris runs by default in a full install? If you did, you'd understand why you want multiple processors.

Do you need massive memory to cache the songs?

Have you considered the kind of back roads this guy might take his SUV on? Once you start hitting some nasty bumps you'll want 4gb of your mp3's cached in ram.

No details on the hookup to the sound system at all.

Who's the troll? He repeatedly mentions the sound system hookup as being the weak point.

If any story ever showed the ineptitude of Slashdot editors, this would be it.

And you are a fetid piece of shit.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to mention, if you really wanted to call 'troll' on this one, you would have pointed out that e450's are EOL'd as of 8/2002 (hence no 'excellent' support for solaris 10) and the power requirements for one are ridiculous, enough so that the power inverter would be worth more than the brief mention it gets.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[dme]

E450s run Solaris 10 just fine. Hardware EOL doesn't indicate that Solaris won't run.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[hutkey]

then again, problems could have simple solutions.

one incedence,
NASA wanted to use a pen in the spacecraft it produced. they spent millions of dollars researching on the perfect ink which could be used to write material on the paper in outer space. finally after some years they were sccessful in doing that.

Russians used pencil!

every problem has a solution, some are simple others simpler...

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[BJH]

Solaris 9 runs just fine on machines going back to the SparcStation days. An E450 is a new kid on the block compared to those fossils. Isee nothing unusual about it being able to run Solaris 10.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[jon323456]

Uh, no kidding. A real install might have done things like *remove the casters* from the case. I'd sure feel great knowing that my E450 mp3 player was on wheels when I slammed on the brakes.

Re:Slashdot got trolled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, my 32-bit SparcStation 5 runs Solaris 9 like a champ. :-)

/. has lost its way

[cyrl]

Another ridiculous project posted on /. Is CowboyNeal on vacation? Seriously though, it would have been much more elegant to come up with a head unit that has a hot-swappable 250 Gb (or larger) drive that pops in like a cd would.

Reliability?

[emorphien]

I wonder how long those SCSI drives would last running in the back of his car going down the road.

Methinks not long.

Smaller is cooler

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I've always thought it was cooler to try and pack as much computing power into as small space as possible, not the other way around. I can't wait for the NanoITX boards. My car computer

I'm not impressed

[Y0tsuya]

Normal people actually use their trunks to carry things like groceries, tools & parts from home depot, luggages, etc. Hauling a big ass computer in the trunk creates a massive inconvenience in everyday life.

Re:I'm not impressed

[DAldredge]

And you are missing the point.

Damn, I miss the old /.

Re:I'm not impressed

[topham]

Bull. Normal people haul subwoofers in the trunk...not leaving enough room for a computer.

Re:I'm not impressed

[Y0tsuya]

Yeah, I know. But I just want to do my part in stopping mainframe-hauling SUV's from proliferating and guzzling more gas.

Re:Apparently the E450 wasn't running the webserve

[devilsammo]

Would you like the passenger side or perhaps the rear view?

damnit, i forgot my close tag.

[jared_hanson]

The italics should have been closed after the last item preceded by a "dash" (-). In case you were wondering.

Oh yeah?

[diesel66]

Pfftt! I got a Cray on my skateboard!

In dash MP3 on a budget

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm happy with my AIWA 504 MP. Sale price was $125 about 5 months ago. Should be able to find it for under $140 easily. AIWA is made by Sony. Works great, sounds great, easy on the wallet. Packed with features. Bright, clear, easy to read display.

"Might as well get an 8-track player"

[mopomi]

My wife's comment before seeing pictures:
"Are you going to build one for our car?"
After seeing pictures:
"Geez! We don't have room for that--we might as well get an 8-track player."

Waste of gasoline...

[SID*C64]

Hauling around that thing is sure to cut into your miles per gallon. What a complete waste of money and time.

I mean, what is the appeal of this? It doesn't take much effort to stick a huge computer in the back of your huge car. How is this newsworthy?

Re:Waste of gasoline...

[ocelotbob]

Actually, it probably isn't affecting his milage all that much. At most, probably shaving off like a tenth of a mile per gallon -- 200 lbs is nothing for a car. Now, were he hauling around a cray supercomputer, you may have a point, but this is well within what's expected of a car. I know I'd be pissed if my car got worse milage if I had a single passenger with me.

Re:Waste of gasoline...

[Paulrothrock]

Here's a link.

Remove excess weight from the trunk. Avoid carrying unneeded items, especially heavy ones. An extra 100 pounds in the trunk reduces a typical car's fuel economy by one to two percent.

So let's assume he gets 25mpg. At minimum he's losing 200lbs * 1% per 100 pounds * 25mpg = 0.5mpg and the maximum is 200lbs * 2% per 100 pounds * 25mpg = 1mpg.

Not much, but it still doesn't make any sense!

I Have Now Officially Seen Everthing

[Myriad]

Though it actually has nothing to do with the E450 in dudes trunk.

No, it is the fact that I just saw a reference to Shaving Cream in a /. sig... (eltoyoboyo's )

Wow. An obscure Benny Bell song... on Slashdot...

I can die fulfilled now.

Oh god, I just realized this means I actually got it. *feels old*

Blockwars: free, multiplayer, head to head game

Re:I Have Now Officially Seen Everthing

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do I know the song of which you speak, I have it in my playlist.

Want a copy?

Re:I Have Now Officially Seen Everthing

[DMUTPeregrine]

Hey, Benny Bell rules. And I'm only 17! Everyone should know the wonder that is Benny Bell.

Re:I Have Now Officially Seen Everthing

[Rosonowski]

Fell in a pile of.... shaving cream

Re:I Have Now Officially Seen Everthing

[FesterDaFelcher]

Wow. An obscure Benny Bell song... on Slashdot...

Obscure? Hardly...

Start singing that song on any elevator in North America, and I _guarantee_ you that half the people will sing along.

One hit wonder, definitely. Cult Classic, probably. But obscure, no way.

Great song though, so now you can go die happily.

Do it better in 2 words.

[CRC'99]

Mini ITX.

Nuff said. I have one sitting under the seat in my car. 7" touchscreen in the dash, GPS and navigation software. All in a mini-case and runs off the 13.8v straight from the car battery.

Yes, that looks geeky, but touchscreen works better :)

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I've got a similar setup. Can't wait for the Nano ITX boards.

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[smurfnsanta]

Somebody mod this guy up +12 insightful bastard. I've got a similar mini itx setup in my dodge pu, runs a slew of MP3's, which I upload/change through a wireless NIC at will. Hugely fun wardriving to work & client sites, & my girlfriend is never bored in it. Stuck in traffic? So what, surf /.

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[naden]

Do it better in 1 word.

iPod.

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[ZorbaTHut]

Quick two questions:

Where'd you get the touchscreen?

What kind of power conditioning are you using?

I've been (slowly) building one of these one my own, but those are two problems I haven't managed to solve to my satisfaction yet :P

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[John Courtland]

3M makes touchscreen films for most standard LCD sizes. I called them one day on this very topic and the guy was REALLY cool about it. They'll send you literature and everything. You could buy an entire one too, 7" are a few hundred new. Also, you can buy DC to DC power supplies for computers. They have all the power conditioning you'll ever need.

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[ocelotbob]

An iPod can't play DVDs. A mini ITX system can. An iPod can't give you driving directions. A mini ITX system can. An iPod can't play the hundreds of .oggs I've ripped. A mini ITX system can.

Re:Do it better in 2 words.

[CRC'99]

Lilliput 7" LCD touchscreen. It does up to 1024x768 (readable, but DAMN it's small), and is powered directly of auto power :)

The touchscreen acts as a USB mouse.

There are easier solutions than this.....

[fuzzyrabbit]

I have a Xeenon mp3 shuttle II (which is at least 4 years old) that happily plays mp3s from a 15G drive. No inverter required.

My boyfriend has a modded Xbox with a 120G drive in his car. Add in an xbox wireless card and it can be updated remotely. Add a Python script and it plays mp3s when the car starts.

Re:There are easier solutions than this.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is how a guy with a modded Xbox in his car has a girlfriend!

Re:There are easier solutions than this.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Note the gf also posts to /. ;-)

Re:There are easier solutions than this.....

[adamofgreyskull]

You mean you don't need "multiple processors"? What about other "process activity"?

And don't you need "large memory for good caching of tunes being played"??

Seriously, all the guy's done is taken a picture of the server in his trunk/boot, there's no evidence that it's even connected..

Re:There are easier solutions than this.....

[Anonymous Coward]

What make you think it's a girl posting? The only reference to gender is the word "boyfriend".

For all we know, Kirk McKusick could have been posting.

Gas / Theft / and other unaccounted costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Unaccounted cost #1:
With gas prices, perhaps not on the rise anymore, but still at an amazing high, how could anyone afford to put something which adds about 200 pounds into their trunk?

Unaccounted cost #2:
Theft of vehical -- need I say more?
Then again, who was the last car-crook you met who knew Solaris? I'd hate to see what the local pawn shop sold that thing for.

Crunk in da trunk

[beavmetal]

Bah! to all those who made cracks about dayton ohio. You forget we host the Hamvention.

Regardless, this guys got the right idea. Personally I decided not to put a computer in my car after ludacris sang about it. However, I still use a laptop and a digital FM converter to play my music.

But really, think about it. Shouldn't this be the way car audio is headed. No need for damn disk. Also, CD are easy, frequent targets for thieves. If your neighbors don't see the wank stealing the server out of the back of your car, then they should buy your replacement. The e450 is a little big. I mean where are the 4 15"s gonna go. And wouldn't the vibration of my subs kill the E450.

Even so, when you compare the price of a computer to that of the phatbox there isn't much difference. Really the computer is more fun and could very well be put to more use. Think replacing the head unit with a touch screen that runs software you wrote to control the system. Who needs a dvd nav system. Put the GPS receiver and the software rigth on the computer. Think wireless file server so you can listen to the music on your car at your desk at work and then transfer all your hard work to the backup car system.

This guy isn't the first person to put a computer in his car. He definitely won't be the last. While there will still be a solid market for component systems, I strongly believe that portable, multifunction car systems will become the norm within 10 years.

Re:Crunk in da trunk

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Think replacing the head unit with a touch screen that runs software you wrote to control the system. Who needs a dvd nav system. Put the GPS receiver and the software rigth on the computer

Yup, that's exactly what I wanted to do. Started looking for parts too, until I realized it would take months of work before it was done (as opposed to merely usable), and I just don't have that kind of spare time -- I'd like to stay happily married, and I would want it done before the end of summer!

But MP3 player, GPS receiver with map (couldn't find any Linux software that would read the Garmin, etc. CDs, tho!) and DVD output to back seat so kids/friends can watch movies on long trips. All in one unit! Except for the MP3 hard drive player, though, you can buy an all in one unit like this from Crutchfield. I'll wait till the price drops below $1000!

Power Problems

[whataboutMike]

One more evidence that it might be a hoax: the E450 requires ~1600 watts of power and the power inverter that he says he uses provides only 300W... A difference of about ~1200W...

Re:Power Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. I saw two 420R's in the back of MY car the other day, but they were just in transit. I should have taken a couple pictures, described it as my MP3 playing cluster, and submitted the page to slashdot.

Re:Power Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

A difference of about ~1200W

(-1, Redundant)

Re:Power Problems

[generic]

Yeah, this must be a fake. The e450 draws about 10 amps. There is no way that little inverter can power that monster. It probably draws more than 10 amps at boot up while the disks spin up. Thats like
1200+ watts. Now I dont know if this e450 is european and takes 240v? but There is now way you can power one with 300w.

Re:Power Problems

[InfiniteWisdom]

A very bad ~ of 1200W

Re:Power Problems

[Patrick]

Now I dont know if this e450 is european and takes 240v?

The inverter in the picture is clearly providing British-plug, 240V power, with a peak output power of 300W. So the current (10A) isn't a big problem, but the power (1600W) probably is. I have a 300W-peak inverter, and it has enough trouble providing 100W for my laptop charger.

Yeah, this must be a fake

I agree. I'm willing to bet the hoax-er doesn't even own an inverter, or he'd have found something better to link to. 2000W-peak inverters do exist, but you have to look for them, they're a little pricey, and you need a truck or RV to power them.

Re:Power Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you could be as big a loser as the dude who submitted this story.

Thanks buddy,

[Brakz0rz]

Now Slashdot will never front page my econoline with the Cray XMP in the back! It serves mp3s, controls my dome light brightness level and runs a meteorological simulation for 300 sq. kilometers. It calls me Dave for some reason. I only had to cut a teensy weensy hole in the roof and add nine batteries.

Hooked right into my 8-track though.

Obvious Choice

[freeze128]

Yeah, I'd use a Sun server for MP3s if I drove a school bus, too. But I have a CAR.

Sell the thing...

[cbreaker]

If he didn't want to spend any money, he could have sold the thing, and gotten a real system with a real interface.

And probably have extra money left over.

Does /. Ever feel guilt?

[masonry]

Off topic, but bear with me. I read this site several time a day, barely ever posting because by the time I get there, most topics have been done to death anyway. What I do find funny though is the number of times I find a fresh topic, go to the link and find some poor unsuspecting server has melted into a small puddle of silicon and overheated cat5. So I ask - does Slashdot ever feel guilty about crushing a server? Or should they be thankful for the higher traffic? (Currently the link at the top of this page is not responding)

I hope...

[jcostantino]

I hope he just had to transport it and took a picture of it in his trunk.

I use a 10 gig iPod, VWcdPIC audio interface, 12' of 1/8" headphone jack cable and a stereo RCA to 1/8" jack Y cable.

Or something like this: 1. $15 worth of Radio Shack audio cables 2. iPod received as gift 3. $45 audio interface to factory cd changer interface 4. ??? 5. Cheaper and ligher than a server in my GTI.

This was to make life easy?

[jm91509]

Cool!

"...the interest in getting a large chunk of music into the car without carrying around and managing a big stack of CDs has remained."

So to avoid the hastle of managing a stack of CD's, this guy has installed an E450 and a SunRay in his car? And after doing all that (no mean feat I would suspect) the audio is connected to his car via a tape converter?

Funny, but me thinks we are having our legs pulled...

Here's a brilliant idea

[The-Bus]

Why don't you put the server back in your room to host the webpage that's been slashdotted, the Kenwood FM/AM/Apache radio you have does not seem to be doing the trick.

CompactFlash car mp3 players ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes me wonder why there have not been any inexpensive Car Stereos built with CF mp3 players? The memory is cheap, durable and readily available. The technology for the player is very mature and cost effective. I would think a CF slot and player circuitry could be added to an indash AM/FM CD player for less than $50 added to the retail cost. I would buy one in a heartbeat to eliminate the stereo cable from my mp3 to the aux in jack in my car.

Re:CompactFlash car mp3 players ?

[sweede]

Many of the higher end audio products have these capabilities. The whole thing that guy did is just beyond idiotic. he probably has spent more money and time on that thing than he could of had he gone out and purchased a new high quaility Alpine or Eclipse head unit that have internal 40-60 gig harddrive, plays DVD's with Mp3's on them, and can use CF type-II slots (ibm microdrives anyone).

Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[MrChuck]

Bet he coulda gotten $500 for a loaded E450 and maintained said investment.

That said, for @work, I suffer with E450's because "They Are Suns". Even when I show that a 1CPU x86 @ 2GHz smokes it.

"and with one CPU, I can be assured that the machine won't lock up with multiple CPUs contending for one resource" (well, it's as reasonable as his thoughts about dedicated CPUs for decoding...)

As for power, a friend just hit a junk yard ambulance and got a 100A alternator (he runs emergency lights on his car going to fires). A 1000watt inverter and you could power the E450.

Just be careful turning with all those disks on. I can see either a disk crash or gyroscopes causing car crashes ;)

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

If the sun does the job and you know how the job will scale over the years, you may find its cheaper over the long haul. I have several decade old sun boxes doing different jobs around the place and some of the PC's that were bought to replace them are somewhere at the local landfil.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, for @work, I suffer with E450's because "They Are Suns". Even when I show that a 1CPU x86 @ 2GHz smokes it.

The hot-swappable memory/CPU replacement that some Sun products provide just can't be beat when compared to a Intel or AMD CPU (atleast current generations).

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[JWSmythe]

How often do you really hot swap memory or CPU's?

Honestly, once we put a production machine up, it usually runs without taking it down. For a lot of our machines, the last time they were taken down for anything is when we physically moved them.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Knightman]

I just want to point out that in raw CPU a 1 CPU x86 @ 2GHz probably smokes an E450. The problem is that an ordinary x86 box hasn't a fraction of the I/O-capacity of an E450, not to mention how bad a x86 is on context-switching.

Anyway, I guess an E450 as a mp3-player in a car is kind of an overkill.

Some people will find it cool, others just plain stupid. Me, I place it in the 'overkill/stupid but cool' category.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[fr0dicus]

Yep, take it past ten concurrent users and I'd take the E450 every time.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Octorian]

Um, the E450 doesn't support hot-swapping those components. You'd need the higher-end EXX00 line of machines for that. Of course to use that feature, you can't use memory interleaving to its full potential on such machines.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

the funny part is that my "carputer" is a 386sx25 based tiny motherboard that is about 3 inches by 3 inches. it play's mp3's with only about a 20% processor load because I decided to not be braindead and use a parallel port mp3 decoder.(a ST MicroElectronics STA013 decoder chip) at one point I had a second IO board and was able to play 2 different mp3 streams at once wit hthis AND still had enough power to waste...

Granted this was 4 years ago and I have cince graduated to something different. but power for playing mp3's are not a requirement at all.

I am betting that I could play most 128Kbps mp3's with my printer port dongle and a 16mhz 286.... Although I never tried it... anyways with a 4 gig hard drive on the above hardware with a lcd + 4 buttons connected to a serial port... it was a no brainer.

nobody needs hefty processing power for playing mp3's

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

A 100A alternator is actually pretty small. A plain old early 90's V8 Camaro has a 105A and many Chebby trucks have 145A alts. My Ram has a 192A alt.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

"and with one CPU, I can be assured that the machine won't lock up with multiple CPUs contending for one resource"

Actually, you can achieve deadlock with a single processor pretty easily too.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you mean by better I/O capacity? Can you give specific examples in technical language?

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[MrChuck]

take it past ten concurrent users and I'd take the E450 every time

(Well, yeah, if the x86 were running Windows.)

On the Sun, that 66MHz PCI is just HUGE! (at least this one had 66MHz, the previous ones were 32bit/33MHz busses). (I'll expect PCI-X (133MHz) support as soon as the rest of the world is 2 generations further). We ran tests of an E420R with hardware RAID against a (2x2GHz) DL380 testing (disk) IO and IMAP (disk, network under most stress) with THOUSANDS of concurrent connections and the 420 was only a little more useful than an expensive anchor.

Sun told us, later, that we should have tested against their then current machines. "LIke what?" we asked. "Like the V880." said Sun.

I offered that I'd just *grant* that a $150,000 8 CPU sun was going to be faster than the $4,000 HP-TanPaqItal. (but maybe not with those built in "FC/AL disks").

So yes, a 4-way 500MHz Ultra II box from Sun will outperform a similar era x86. Usually by a good 30%. It will cost between 2 and 3 times more than an x86.

But the E450's era was 4+ years ago. A single processor box with a 3.2GHz processor and ECC RAM (Sun never offered ECC until this last generation, it killed us) will leave the Sun wondering what happened. The Sun will NOT saturate a SCSI/160 buss (do the math). Big Suns (4500's) have multiple PCI, but the E450's stumble along). My sub-$200 motherboards come with DDRAM and PCI-X slots. Shall we talk about IO in that context?

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[fr0dicus]

You acknowledge yourself that you're comparing hardware from different eras.... move along.

Plus connections != users. I'm talking about people doing things, not poxy IMAP connections which my VIA mini-ITX could handle. Of course you'd use an x86 for that, it's so trivial a task it's not worth investing in real kit, when multiple x86 cheapy boxes will do.

Re:Sell monster 90's server; use money to buy iPod

[MrChuck]

You wanna go into detail as to what a "user" does to a machine versus what an IMAP connection which causes several .db files, perhaps skip 2000 message files and punch a lot of data out through the wire. Or do you just want to /. the issue and ignore it (which is fine, we're talking to windows users mainly here). (sorry, when I run IMAP, we start talking at 40,000 users; 100k is still pretty unchallenging.)

I acknowledge that an E450 in use today (per the article) is a dog compared to most intel boxes of 2 years ago. It was MARGINALLY better than the Intel boxes of 1998 (and lagged most of their Unix competitors. Now, when we get to $30,000 for the thing in the first place, bang/buck was pretty low.

By and large, any 1 or 2-way Sun (even the Ultra 3's) are dogs compared to their era equiv hardware. AT the time of E450 introduction, there wasn't a lot of good AMD/Intel 4-way hardware.

However, price similar Alphas and SGI did kick sun's butt.

Sun hasn't LED the performance pack in a long long long time. This goes back to the SPARCStation 2 era. It was an issue with science and engineering folks then. When the SPARCStation 5 & 20 came out, for around $8k for the 20 @ 60MHz, we got a gang of Alpha's at 166MHz (AFAIR) for the same price. Since Sun was telling is to move our apps from BSD/SunOS 4 to SVR4/Solaris 2.x, we decided to move to OSF/1 on a machine that was actually FASTER. At the time, AIX and HPUX were also smoking sparcs.

But that's mainly moot.

The Suns, as they come out, tend to use PCI from a couple generations back. Until VERY recently, they didn't use ECC. Remember all those failing 400MHz E4500 CPU boards? I do. They FINALLY put in cache with ECC.

So:
No, sun is rarely at the cutting or leading edge of performance with 4 or fewer processors. SPARC chips are NOT speed demons. Now, at 12 or 16 (or 32) processors, they are unChallenged by Intel/AMD boxes. But looking at an E4800 with a gang of 900MHz chips, we wanted to add 1200MHz chips. Doh! Forklift upgrade. Sorry - gotta replace them ALL. (the 4WAY SGI that's CrayLinked to another 4WAY SGI turning it into a scalable 8WAY box, doesn't have that issue. And I can get all the 4Way SGIs I want, as I want, and make it into a bigger and bigger machine.)

But mostly on-topic: just POWERING an E450 from a car would be a challenge. Selling the sucker, buying an iPod and perhaps spending the rest on dinner and things for a cute girl wouldn't get his pics on slashdot, but it would prolly be a lot more satisfying and functional for him, all things considered.

A more interesting hack would be my Kaypro Model 2 running mp3s.

Over and out.

The sad thing is...

[cjwl]

this guy works for Sun.

It certainly explains a lot about the reality distortion field at Sun these days.

"ideal machine" ?

The guys at Apple working on the 80gb iPod must be falling out of their chairs.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

http://216.239.51.104/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=cach e%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.dme.org%2Flog%2F2004%2F06%2F1 6%2Fproject-icece

sun powered cars are possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give a (you know what) to gas prices put the power of the sun in your car and off you go.

Believers are idiots.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

This is just a funny joke. Anyone who took this seriously is an idiot.

E450 doesn't even have sound

[BooRadley]

From Sunsolve

If someone wants to show where the sound card goes in this e450, I'd love to see it. As it is, one of the newer Intel P4's with hyperthreading, coupled with a pair of SATA drives and fast memory will blow this thing out of the water on almost every count. I wouldn't waste my time or the space trying to get the beast hooked up.

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[|<amikaze]

I believe that would be in one of the TEN PCI slots...

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[Alex]

You are wrong,

http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Devices/Mis ce llaneous/MISC_Audio_Mod.html

Alex

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you install the Audio Module!

http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Devices/Mis ce llaneous/MISC_Audio_Mod.html

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[Anonymous Coward]

nice to see that SUN people are pretty damned stupid.

either that or they never were told what a PCI expansion slot was for. there are SEVERAL pci sound cards that have support under solaris...

but such a tidbit is a bit technical for a SUN admin/user/expert and really would escape their attention...

too bad that solaris doesnt come with minesweeper.

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[Jeremy Erwin]

He used an Ensoniq AudioPCI card-- another piece of obsolete hardware from the 1990s.

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[CaptnMArk]

But in a running car even classic covox (sp) would server a good enough purpose.

Re:E450 doesn't even have sound

[joescrooge]

As it is, one of the newer Intel P4's with hyperthreading, coupled with a pair of SATA drives and fast memory will blow this thing out of the water on almost every count.

except one...price. read carefully, he didn't pay for the 450, it was free.

Brilliant

[nickgrieve]

Nice work.

Stories like this are what drew me to /. many years ago...

more like this please.

Good god

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

The funniest thing about this, is at the end, he ends up using a casette output converter.... the SAME EXACT ONE YOU CAN USE ON AN iPOD OR $50 MP3 PLAYER!

Ba-da---ching

Re:Good god

[zakezuke]

The funniest thing about this, is at the end, he ends up using a casette output converter.... the SAME EXACT ONE YOU CAN USE ON AN iPOD OR $50 MP3 PLAYER!

This is what I was thinking, but I wasn't thinking Ipod but rather a portable DVD player. It's hard to say whether this unit referenced would do DVD-mp3, I sorta take it for granted I own a stand alone player that just does it. But given the starting price of in-dash DVD players = about the same cost as the starting price of indash mp3 players, well the choice is clear.

iPod ? Why do people keep doing this...

[EvilCabbage]

I've thought about rigging a PC up in my car(s) on more than one occasion, but with the event of DVD support in head units and audio input options, isn't it just infinitely easier (and gives a better end result) to plug an iPod into your head unit? Hell, with current Australian fuel prices (..and you think you yanks have something to cry about..) I'm critical of carrying around an extra few hundred kilos of hardware just to play some more music...

Re:iPod ? Why do people keep doing this...

[Cid Highwind]

isn't it just infinitely easier (and gives a better end result) to plug an iPod into your head unit?

Yes, but a Sun E450 with a multi-terabyte RAID is still significantly cheaper than an iPod.

Re:iPod ? Why do people keep doing this...

[lucas teh geek]

As an australian currently living in the UK I'd just like the point out that we are getting a better deal on petrol than a few places. Around here petrol goes for 80-90 pence per litre, approximately AU$2.10 per litre. once I get back I'm never going to look at petrol prices the same way I used to :P
</offtopic>

Here's an improvement

[earthforce_1]

Add a wireless ethernet link and in car microphone, so he can take requests from other drivers and play MP3s back for anybody in range. Just think - the world's first mobile, all digital radio station.

I think I am onto something here!

yes

[SHEENmaster]

the E450 is a PCI system, so you can throw a PCI RAID controller in it for some cheapass drives. E3500 users like myself aren't so lucky, with only FC-AL internally and some SCSI controllers for external drives. It's SBus instead of PCI, so I can't get an IDE controller for it.

Fake?

[beesquee]

This is ridiculously impractical and needlessly difficult. I see no evidence that this guy actually did the mod. Just a pic of a big computer in the back of his van. -comic book guy voice "worst post ever"

Re:Fake?

[Maavin]

Since we all know that it indeed *IS* fake, we like to discuss about it as when it was not fake.

That's the fun..

Well that's just fine and dandy...

[Spittles]

Well that's just fine and dandy... until the RIAA supoenas your car.

Off-the-shelf Ogg Vorbis car audio player?

[reddish]

On a related note:

I've been on the lookout lately for a car audio player that can play Ogg Vorbis. There's plenty of choice if you want MP3 or WMA, but I have yet to see Ogg Vorbis support advertized...

Has anyone seen such a beast?

Enterprise-class Car Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a long time, getting from there to here.

I bet he is either Canadian or,

[Anonymous Coward]

from midwest, and probably ripped off the hardware a week before his company went belly up.

And now back to reality and CSPAN-2.

USB head unit

[Anonymous Coward]

why doesn't someone just make a headunit that you can plug usb key drives or large external hard drives into?

Will re refile Madona's songs under E?

[Anonymous Coward]

.oO0Oo.

Duh huh!

[LoocSiMit]

1. Put E450 in back of vehicle.
2. Take pictures.
3. Post pix on site with fabricated explanation.
4. Successfully troll slashdot.
5. ???
6. Profit!!

Re:Duh huh!

[(C)0N0(R)]

5. ./ server

hammer time

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the title of this article should be "Here's a little site, let's see if we can take it down".

Umm.. can you say colossal waste of money?

[CodeTRap]

Why not simply get a 6 CD changer that READS MP3's! Sorry, I don't think this guy is cool at all. I think he's a idiot.

Pioneer Car Audio that can play MP3 & WMA

Re:Umm.. can you say colossal waste of money?

[McCrapDeluxe]

He said he hasn't paid anything for it at this point.

Re:Umm.. can you say colossal waste of money?

[EmagGeek]

There's always this guy... this was a nice piece of work.

Doable in 300 watts I bet...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you that doubt it can be done off a normal 12 volt battery, I bet it can.... I own a Sun E4500 with 10 processors, 4GB of ram, and 4 power supplies, and when up and running crunching numbers on CPU intensive code, it only draws 650 watts, measured with a Kill A Watt So, an E450 which is a much smaller machine, ought to EASILY run in less than half that much power, even with all those hard drives spinning. The power supply specs Sun gives are conservative enough that unless you've got a maximally configured system, they don't use anywhere near that much power. You'd have to have all of the PCI slots, disk trays, CPU and memory maxed out to hit the rated peak power consumption.

a few choice quotes

[real_smiff]

right.. for anyone not clear on the "joke" status of this story, here's a few choice quotes:

"With a four port ethernet card in the E450 it would be simple to connect four Sun Ray 150 terminals and allow both general control of the system and also support each child choosing a video stored in the RAID array."

"The E450 still has casters at the moment...the machine would be much more stable if they were removed"

"excellent support for Solaris 10, so that I can test bug-fixes, etc. while on the road if necessary"

at first i didn't see this as funny, i was angry, but now a few people point it out.. i get it. i just hope the author is in on the joke, otherwise i'd be worried.

incorrect

[cjwl]

Soundblaster for E450 Probably where this guy got the idea to begin with.

What's *not* necessary

[commodoresloat]

is a honkin' server in your trunk just to listen to music. A server *and* a laptop. I guess it didn't occur to him to just plug the laptop directly into the cassette deck that he has the E450 plugged into. Or, here's an idea, get an iPod! (And a car stereo with AUX input so you're not playing through a crappy cassette deck). In response to why you wouldn't want this in your trunk -- it's damn easy to steal (even has wheels to wheel it away). ... on a completely unrelated note, if this thing is stolen, you might need to worry about an RIAA lawsuit for distributing copyrighted music....

Re:What's *not* necessary

[golgotha007]

is a honkin' server in your trunk just to listen to music.
Or, here's an idea, get an iPod!

the only way this can be justified is if you didn't spend any money. i started a similar project in the summer of 2002. the entire concept was to *not spend any money* and get it going with parts laying around the house.

i ended up putting an old beatup p300 in the back of my car, with a mini keyboard running up to the front. i had it booting up in init 1 (for speed) with a nice female voice announcing she was 'ready' when it finished booting up, people really dug that.

i was using some little program i found on sourceforge, god i can't remember the name of it, that used mpg123 for the backend, which worked great. i hacked the program up a bit to allow for certain songlists to be played when a certain keys was struck on the mini keyboard.

now, this was free and worked really well, but here's what i would rather have done:

i wanted to catalog each song into a mysql database with fields like year, genre, artist, etc.(typical id3 tag fields) i wanted to incorporate speech recognition so one could populate search fields based on what they wanted, e.g., 'search rock from 1970 to 1972' and have a playlist generate from the results. if you took a cheapo microphone, but applied a hardcore limiter to it, it should work fine even with a bunch of background noise.
and since the machine is running linux, how easy would it be to write up a quick php front end for custom playlist organization, song transfers to and from the machine over wireless....the possibilities are endless and all for just a few bucks and some of your time.

i have a pic, but it doesn't really show any details :( this pic shows the little keyboard i was using, but i had set the output for this little stereo as we were camping and wanted a little music.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[Onan]

...it's damn easy to steal...

Um, you've never tried to move an e450, have you? Especially one loaded with disks?

Would-be thieves would probably have an easier time walking away with his transmission. Hell, the added weight probably makes the car harder to steal.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[theLOUDroom]

on a completely unrelated note, if this thing is stolen, you might need to worry about an RIAA lawsuit for distributing copyrighted music....

And how is that going to work exactly?

Theif: "Hello, police, I stole this multi-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, a felony, but I was hoping you'd let me go if I turned this guy in for having mp3s."
Cop: "Why don't you come down to the station and we'll talk about it....."

Re:What's *not* necessary

[Old Uncle Bill]

I don't get it either. From his page:
It's too noisy: This is just wrong. When booting the machine is quite noisy, but this settles to a re-assuring hum once the Solaris platform management code kicks in to monitor the system.
Bullshit. I have an E250 in my server room at home and I can barely stand to be in the same room with it. Sounds like an airplane taking off. Not to mention the fact that I'm thinking of getting rid of it just for the power bill. Those things don't exactly have 250 Watt power supplies in them. And for the size/performance, he could sell that thing on ebay and put a terabyte of storage in his car on a dual P4 and damn near fit it under the seat. Those things have like, what, 400 Mhz Sparc procs in them? Max? My 250 at home does fine, but not exactly designed for encoding/decoding audio. But then again, I'm going to get my geek card taken away for saying all of that.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[DJStealth]

Once I heard he had a laptop to manage everything, I realized that this whole thing must be a joke. He probably had to transport the E450 between branches at work, and decided to take some pics of it.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[HeyLaughingBoy]

the only way this can be justified is if you didn't spend any money

Or you have more spare time than I do. I have been thinking of this for a while. Even came up with a preliminary design for a custom steering wheel-mounted control that would communicate with the main PC by RS232/485. Then I realized that even if I found a suitable PC for $50 or so (or fitted the only spare motherboard I have into a small industrial case that would cost about that much), all the time I would spend writing code, designing an easy way to load new MP3 files (along with the CDDB data) was worth a lot more to me than the $200 that a hard-drive based portable MP3 player would cost.

It's a cool project, don't get me wrong, but a lot of us have so little spare time (and enough spare cash!) that our projects have to be stuff we can't buy at Circuit City!

Re:What's *not* necessary

[walt-sjc]

Um, I'm calling bullshit on the E450 running in a car. First pothole you hit and it's time for new hard drives. Hell, notebook hard drives are bad enough and they are DESIGNED for higher shocks. There are some new notebook drives that are pretty good, but server drives? Nope. No frickin way.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[commodoresloat]

That's what the wheels are for. No more difficult than pushing a loaded shopping cart.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[DJStealth]

Does anyone even think that a car's alternator could handle the wattage needed to run an E450? It comes with a 600W power supply (which is about 5A at 120V; translating to at least 50A at 12VDC). (He says he's using 230V outlets on his system, but in any case, the calculation to 12VDC is still the same)

I just have a feeling that the 'power inverter' isn't capable of 600W per power supply (I checked the specs on the E450), and neither is the car's alternator to handle it. Actually, this link to the power inverter he used says that it only handles 300W; which is clearly insufficient to handle a single E450 power supply.

Re:What's *not* necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't take many mexicans to steal a 300lb tool chest. Not everyone is a weak and lonely as you, plenty of geeks have a buddy to help them cart it away. (why not wheel it away on a dolly?)

This is a joke

[asb]

Check the pic. The box is on wheels. This guy just took pics of an e450 in his trunk and wrote up a humorous article to accompany them.

But it was funny. I laughed at all the slashdotters who ate it. :-D

Kenwood Music Keg

[JPriest]

You can pick up a 20 gig Kenwood Music Kegfor $350.

You connect the cartridge to your PC via USB to upload songs. The major disadvantage is that it requires a Kenwood head unit. I look forward to when other car audio companies release competing products and they come down in price some.

Re:Kenwood Music Keg

[flab007]

I just bought me a Pioneer DEH-P3500MP .. I just burn a number of my MP3's to a CDR and voila .. works like a charm!

Re:Kenwood Music Keg

[Alan Partridge]

I've got one of those too, quite a good little unit - absolutely refuses to work with DRM'd CDs too, which entirely justifies my ripping them and then sending them back for a refund.

Free to him, but was it to Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder Sun isn't profitable: the employees are too busy taking still useful hardware home from work and hacking it up.

Omnifi DMP1

[LDoggg_]

Or you can pick an Omnifi DMP1 for just a little more and get all that plus WIFI sync capabilities. Also, any head unit with an AUX in will work with it or you can use an FM modulator.

www.omnifimedia.com

way over the top

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, that's way the hell over the top

PhatBox

[joe_bruin]

the omnifi is quite a piece of junk (i know, i own one).

the best product i've seen so far is the phatbox. it's being sold by volkswagen and audi as optional equipment. the kenwood music keg is a derivative of the phatbox that only works with kenwood stereos, but you can buy a phatbox that works with many types of car stereos.

there are several other makers of in-car mp3 players. ssi neo, the omnifi, the now defunct empeg/riocar. none of these made any inroad with real manufacturers because of poor quality and terrible usability. after having used the phatbox SSA interface (it talks to you, so you can find your songs without ever having to look down at a display), i'm never buying another product without it.

Re:PhatBox

[LDoggg_]

the omnifi is quite a piece of junk (i know, i own one).

Just curious.. what don't you like?

I own one too and am very happy with it.
Just calling it a piece of junk sounds like flamebait to me.

It's going to overheat

[Stonent1]

There's no airflow back there and that cardboard top doesn't help. I've got an SGI Indy with a 36gb 10k drive in it that raises my room temp about 5 degrees. The drive itself takes 5 to 10 minutes just to cool down before you can touch it.

ENIAC

[MixMiesterT]

Calm down -- wait till you see what I have in my trunk... i've got ENIAC -- and it run's MP3's real good only just a bit slow

Tron Guy?

[Hoonis]

Is this the Tron Guy's car?

I'm so impressed

[Anthony]

We had one guy hear trasport a E450 on its wheels down the street about 40 metres and we had to reseat everything before it booted properly. This is the best hack I've seen in a long time. Who cares if it's practical or much easier with a powerbook or whatever, it is not the point.

The E450 is too noisy?

[mrjb]

Jeez. The guy has a problem with the e450 (by what I understand mostly the fans) being too noisy. I have a tip for him: For ultimate listening pleasure, remove engine from car.

Re:The E450 is too noisy?

[CommieOverlord]

Having worked in an office with a E450 I can indeed vouch that it is bloody noisy. Inside a small confined space like a car it would probably be as bad as the engine itself.

That would last an hour in the UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before some 12 year-old knicked it.

Put the E450 in my car??

[ader]

What, and lose my coffee table?!

Still, I pray that this guy has to log a support call with Sun about this. Given that they object if you move a server between data centres using your trunk, I can't wait to hear what they say when they find out the box is actually housed in one.

Ade_
/

all its good for

[SQLz]

Thats all that Sun box is good for, besides a door stop. Sun couldn't make a decent anything if their life depended on it. Now we have to live with their crappy ass for even longer because they sold their soul to MS.

Re:Mirror (here's one that works)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a mirror that works.

Pieter

That a univac in your trunk, or u hppy to see me?

[ElDuderino44137]

I haven't read any of the responses in the thread ...

But my immediate reaction after seeing the pictures is: WTF?

and

Why/How did this make it on /. ?

There is no cool case mod.
He put a freakin' univac in his trunk
for crying out loud!

We don't want to reward this behavior.

Someone on the dudes web site said it best.
"Dad, I'm sick of this song"
"Ok, son, just use your terminal to telnet
into the e450 and modify the rc script to
exclude that song"
"Can't we just get one of those dvd players
like Jimmy has?"
"No. Use the supercomputer. You need to
learn solaris."

Cheers,
-- The Dude

Putting the box to better use?

[polyp2000]

Maybe he could have put that box to better use by hosting his website on it.

what about the UPS?

[tommeke100]

Shouldn't he install a 200 pounds UPS to shut down his server properly when his battery dies :) ? At least his car would be a low-rider for free with all that weight in the trunk.

The page has comments section

[basingwerk]

The page has a comments section - I've posted the following. Does anybody else have views on this aspect?

Given that global warming is a bigger threat to mankind than terrorism, shouldn't we be reducing the amount of stuff we carry around in cars? Do you care at all about the air pollution you cause by carting all that iron around, not to mention the power it uses up?

Excellent idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ordered a IBM p690 Regatta with 32 CPUs for my mobile home. This is gonna be a hell of an MP3 and video server. And central heating. And SETI / MD5 cracking machine, etc.

Duh.

I had an Advantech 5820 embedded board based MP3 player in my former car for ~18 months a while ago, but I dumped it to get an Archos player. More mobile, a true hand-held, less cumbersome. Although it was cool to have a Linux machine in the car, with the LILO menu coming up on the 4x20 LC display :-)

Underachiever with big car, Film at 11

[billcopc]

It seems we have a new one of these every other week, and they're all underachievers in that they simply accomplish what we've all done with our laptops since the day MP3 was unleashed upon the world, except these guys make a big fuss about it and take extra steps just to make their page appear meaty.

On the other hand, we've got audio nazis (yours truly) trying to put together a piece of stereo that will bring tears to your eyes, at significant cost, mind you. Just look at all the Mini-ITX projects out there, and try to imagine what a bored hacker can accomplish. And for the love of god, NO MORE TAPE ADAPTORS. What's the sense in using several hundred dollars in computer equipment for mp3 decoding, when the stereo system itself is OEM ?

Anyways, here's the right way to do this, at least the right way to build something worthy of slashdot visibility:

- DC-DC power supply with ignition sensing
- x86 or ARM system, preferably hidden from view
- custom code that works like a real stereo, no lame XMMS hacks with weird keypress combos
- proper amplification and aftermarket speakers
- in-dash display and control panel, either standard DIN size or a D-DIN touchscreen
- rotary encoder! (or something even better)
- WiFi and/or a removable drive for file mgmt
- how about a nice slot-load cd-rom for when you want to hear the cd you haven't ripped yet, and while you're at it, rip it right then and there in 5 minutes or less

Bottom line: don't just hook a PC into your car stereo; make a car stereo out of a PC. Make it so only YOU know it's a PC, because it works so damn seamlessly that only an acute observer will notice the lack of a brand name :)

it's a hoax

[shin0r]

Apart from more technical things like the e450 has no sound card, and requires quite a bit of juice to even turn on, notice this:

It's still on it's trolley wheels.

Funny though :)

Three references in one!

[Spunk]

I hear it blows their clothing right off... at six parsecs.

Bolt it to the floor

[Dani Filth]

I feel sorry for the baby that has to ride in front of a 200lb Sun server that is going to come crashing through the back seat in an accident...

Deadly cargo

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine how cool this guy will feel when he gets in an accident and this 205 lb. (plus the weight of the drives and inverter) chunk of steel and plastic hurtles around the inside of his car.

Re:Deadly cargo

[09za]

you'll poke your eye out
the sky is falling
........

*sigh*

[cgreuter]

Two things:

1. While I appreciate the sheer perversity of this, it looks a bit fishy to me. Can an E450 handle the bumps, jolts, heat and grime associated with being in a car all of the time? Does it actually use so little power that you can run it off a 12V car battery? Could someone with more hands-on experience with those sorts of beasties please offer an informed opinion?
2. Could the Slashcode people please add a (-1, Doesn't Get It) moderation option?

Alrighty, then.

This is overkill, bigtime

[acoustix]

I have a system in my car. Stripped down Win98SE, Pentium 166MHz, 128 RAM (no virtual mem), 2GB sys HD, 40GB, Winamp 2.91, SoundBlaster, Keypad, 4 line/40 character LCD.

I have over 4,000 songs and it NEVER skips.

He's just doing it for the "coolness factor", I did it for practical use.

-Nick

Re:This is overkill, bigtime

[tommeke100]

That must be some hot fucking Pentium 166 !!! Not only does it not skip, but it has 40 GB. putting 40 GB on a Pentium 166, is that even possible???

Re:This is overkill, bigtime

[acoustix]

The BIOS doesn't recognize the whole 40GB, it only sees the first 8GB. But Win98 sees the whole 40GB and that's all that matters.

-Nick

Re:This is overkill, bigtime

[tommeke100]

oh, ok. that's cool. I had a Pentium 2 400, and plp said I wouldn't be able to put a HD bigger then 32GB, unless I had a BIOS upgrade. I didn't know Windows could overrule that. Nice!

At least someone

[XMyth]

Is still buying from Sun.

There's a SparStation5 in mine

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for reminding me to clean out my trunk.

MPG?

[PhuCknuT]

Gotta wonder what this does to his miles per gallon, considering both the weight and the massive alternater load.

e450 insanity

[multipartmixed]

The E450 weighs a freakin' TON. I mean it. It takes two strong guys to get one in and out of the rack. Heavy things tend to do well with bumps and shocks and such.

Also, the HD cage in an E450 is rubber mounted. That sure ain't gonna hurt.

But still, I'll bet those disks start failing sooner rather than later. Especially if he lives near me. I have to replace shit on my bike every year because it just can't handle the city streets.

I just understand why the hell he ran a stripe instead of a mirror. It's not like he needs the storage more than he needs the redundancy.

Oh, and he's going to have to have one hell of an alternator to run that thing, too. IIRC, the sticker on the back of the e450 says 14A @ 110VAC. That's over 1400W, and more than 100A at car-charging voltage!

Of course, the load varies greatly depending on CPUs and disks installed.

I say this is a fake. If not, I want to see the monster wires he has running from the alternator to the inverter.

My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

man , all I did was get one of these.
I thought I would fill up the 20GB capacity but I am nowhere near that. Added bonus is that I have enough room in my trunk for a SUB

Wow.. mobile pr0n

[bl8n8r]

> If each of them had the option of watching their
> choice of films, television programs, etc. the
> time would pass more easily.

Think of the possibilites for hosting bachelor/bachelorette parties in that thing. No need for a stripper - just click on the XXX link from the passenger seat.

Modify a CAT 5 Cable, how absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article....

General management of the system is performed using an Apple Powerbook and an ethernet cable. The ability to use a normal cable as a cross-over is a great feature of the Apple machines.

He's glad he didn't have to make a special cat 5 crossover cable ?????? Too big a mod ??

iPod for cars coming

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is going to be pissed when he finds out about this.

Currently its 'iPod for BMW' (.com), but surely the generic variety will follow.

I think its real kool to have a server in the car.

[Alpengeist]

A Sun server to boot.

an e450 ?!?!

[Archfeld]

a soon to be rarity, a ultrasparc chip :) I think I would have gone the ultra10 with some disks myself for half the electricity and much less space but heck it is a plain cool mod job anyway you look at it ? Maybe my alpha 2/400 server HAS a future beyond a ROCK SOLID firewall :)

That is the dumbest shit I've ever seen

[Anonymous Coward]

And the stupidest article since 'How to install linux on a dead racoon'.

MP3

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't he try Clarion's Music Catcher DXZ845MC. It can digitally record up to 80 songs by simply loading a CD and pushing the record button. The best thing is: there are no removeable hard drives or kegs. It's really easy.

That Particular E450

[Anonymous Coward]

...used to build the Solaris 8 Freeware Companion CD FYI. :-)

Jumper cables?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why he didn't just claim to pull the PSUs and run jumper cables from the battery to the 12v PSU jacks in the chassis. A minivan battery has no problem supplying hundreds of amps, and the E450 probably only uses 1600W when powering up or under heavy load.

A Binder of Disks?

[HerbanLegend]

A couple things are inconsistent here. If he is tired of "carrying around a binder full of CDs", why did he put a 250-lb computer in the back of his gas-guzzler?

And how did he play those CDs? Presumably on the Cassette deck?

What a loser.