What is this Strange Gadget in My Car?

VanessaDannenberg asks: "Four months ago my fiancé and I bought a 1997 Thunderbird, which came with a few aftermarket mods. Of particular interest is this strange radio-related gadget that was attached to the windshield above the mirror. It has two 5-pin ports on it (as pictured) which accept a flat cable that runs under the car's headliner. I can't tell where that cable ends, but I figure it's a laptop interface (RS232?). Has anyone seen this thing before? What does it do?"

Comments

I know, I know!

[tfinniga]

It posts the images on something other than geocities.

Hope you didn't want to use your geocities account for a few days.

BTW, is this a record?

[leonbrooks]

8 minutes from /. posting to digital smoking crater. (-:

I remember putting an article up on a 64kb (yes, b not B) link some years back, then it got found and posted to ./; within about 1/2 an hour the link was grinding (./ was much smaller in those days, this is not my first ./ ID) and within two hours it died completely (pings went into hyperspace). For three days.

So heavy was the traffic that taking the webserver down didn't make a noticeable difference. Even if they'd been able to get through, the DNS queries alone would have been enough to smash the link flat. Think "trying to fill a thimble from a wide-open firehose".

a mirror

[Fletch]

I've never used Flickr before, so I've no idea whether this mirror will stop working after N bytes, views, etc. But there it is.

Re:a mirror

[Micro$will]

Not 100% but it looks a whole *LOT* like a reciever for a secuity system.

Yes it is, high end Viper or Prestige, forgot which. My friend had the exact same alarm, until someone stole his car.:D

And that "funny angle" in the LED display is there because it's supposed to be mounted on the A-pillar.

Image mirror

[epsalon]

here

Re:Occam's Razor

[WWWAvenger]

I'd have to agree with this analysis. The crystal with a frequency of 6.775117MHz would correspond with a 433Mhz unlicensed band reciever (with a 64x multiplier).

Think copper, coated with plastic

[b00m3rang]

Seriously how-t-f are you sopposed to use the laptop??? looking straight up at the screen as it sits flush with the roof? look at it upside down?

Much in the same way that I don't need to drag my computer to every web server I want to connect to. They have wires for that.

Re:Alarm system display and remote control receive

[VanessaDannenberg]

Thanks to everyone who wrote with their suggestions. After a little more digging and some insight from you all here, it turns out this is part of an Excalibur "Gold" ATV1600 car alarm. One site out of about 47 bazillion I waded through had a picture to confirm it's identity. Now the fun part is finding out where the rest of the system is (doesn't make sense that the previous owner would only take part of the system with him).

Oh, in answer to why I posted here... I could think of no better way to get an answer about a device that looks geeky to me, than to ask a bunch of geeks. :)

/me watches her Karma go up in flames along with Yahoo.