I was looking through the Sunday paper, and saw this in the Best Buy paper (look in lower right corner):

http://64.14.232.164/BestBuyInserts/WeeklyFiles/PDFs/0602_15AP2.PDF

Notice that it looks like it's packaged inside an amplifier heatsink?!?!? What the....?

They are selling Neos at Brisbane Car Sound here in Australia - and we're usually last to get this kind of stuff. They are kinda like the department store car stereo place around here.

Here it is in Australia...

Only roughly US$400 (I don't think that includes a HDD though). Pretty cheap really. Pity the empeg didn't take like the Neo is starting to....

Notice that it looks like it's packaged inside an amplifier heatsink?!?!? What the....?

Yeah, it looks like they decided to go with an FM modulator. Bad choice, I think. As we've discussed, there's a serious reduction in sound quality with FM modulators.

I only assume they packaged it in the amp looking container so you could mount it in your trunk and have it look all cool.

Here's their page with more info:
http://www.ssiamerica.com/products/neo35/index.html

i was reading the description... and i saw a line that will kill this product.

Operates with a 3.5" IDE hard-drive.

i've seen many of my friends try and hookup old computers in slim cases to their trunk, but always w/ the same result. the hdd fails, because of vibration and the fact that 3.5" ide drives don't have a shock protection.

What would be really neat is if someone made a car player that used laptop drives, shock protected them, and kept them spun down most of the time. Yeah, that would be neat.

Yep, that would be nice, too bad no company currently makes such a product :-(

(I really hope an OEM empeg is really close to release. So many people have taken interest in my empeg now that they are no longer available).

Before my empeg in my car I had a single board PC and a 3.5" desktop drive which had only minimal vibration protection. It was almost identical to Hugo's original empeg.

The drive was kept spinning the entire time. My first drive was a Quantum 6.4G EX Fireball and it ran flawlessly for 2 years and another 1 year in a desktop and is still running fine today. I upgraded to a 30G Samsung which ran without fault for a year and is still running fine.

I don't think that 3.5" drives will kill the Neo at all. They would obviously have some shock protection and drives these days are quite robust.

What kind of car do you drive? Where was that computer located?

I only ask because all cars and driving conditions will be different. There's a guy in my office who had an Isuzu Rodeo with a 6CD changer in his dash. That car has tight suspension, and he drives into work on particularly pothole ridden streets in DC. He's had to have his changer fixed/replaced several times. I highly doubt a 3.5 drive would last very long in those conditions.

I actually had my NE035 installed in the trunk of my Sebring for over a year, and drove on almost nothing but country roads. I had a Seagate 30GB drive installed and never had a problem with it (other than the NEO being the devil incarnate!). I think that most 3.5" drives are actually put together pretty well judging by my experience. Even so, I ALWAYS kept my mp3s backed up on my server. (i guess that kind of defeats the purpose of having a stand-alone player, doesnt it!)

ED7

I drive a Holden Commodore which probably doesn't mean much to you. I think it was based on Opel something or other - might have been an Opel Commodore..

Anyway it has lowered, sports suspension and low profile tyres resulting in a very average ride - sticks to the road like a squashed koala though . I'm actually considering having it raised a bit in attempt to get some more suspension travel and some slightly softer springs to get some more ride comfort back.

Computer was underneath the parcel shelf behind the rear seat so basically right over the rear wheels where you quite often find CD changers.

And our roads are definitely _not_ all that spectacular.

Is there such a thing that allows me to connect a laptop HD to a 40 pin IDE cable in my desktop machine ?

or what about the opposite, can I get a 40 pin IDE cable (like the one in my desktop) out of the empeg,

Is there an appropriate gender-bender?

Certainly does. I have one right in front of me. It has a 44pin laptop HDD connector, a 40 way 0.1" header and a socket for a standard 3.5" hard drive power connector. And a tiny bit of PCB in between.

As for going the other way, then yes I also have a cable that has a 2.5" 44 way connector on one end and two 40 way connnectors on the other. You don't need a power connector since in this case you'll have the power socket on the 3.5" drive.

Shouldn't be too hard to find on computer web store somewhere.

This is what I use, works in both directions (laptop drive on desktop machine, desktop drive on empeg).

http://rtr.ca/recent/ide_plug.jpg

-ml

Exactly what I have Mark... Never thought of using it in reverse (duh!) instead ... I also have standard IDE looking cable that has a 2mm 2.5" HDD connector at one end. Won't let you use a laptop drive on a PC though since it doesn't connect power.

Yeah, that sounds about like my past experiences too. I think a standard IDE PC hard drive is fine for most in-car applications, as long as appropriate steps are taken. If vibration is a concern, try taking some foam padding material (like the egg-crate looking stuff that they sometimes glue to the insides of cardboard boxes to protect the contents in shipping) and place it under the IDE drive. There's no reason you're necessarily required to screw the drive in to a mounting bracket - if doing so means the entire bracket assembly is going to be vibrating a lot in a car. Get more creative. I've seen people string wire through the screw holes of drive cages and use it to suspend the hard drive in place.

I totally geeked out... paid way too much for a biscuit board PC from www.advantech.com... was running some dos mp3 utility which drove my serial lcd and keypad.... the pc was cool, a small 486 with vga out, audio out, usb 10m ethernet, two serial ports, 64m ram, the works.... I had it dual booting dos/win98 which auto booted into dos if you didn't hit a key in 2 or 3 seconds, so basically I'd pull it out from under my seat take it inside plug it into ethernet, boot into 98 copy some music and that was it. I still enjoy my rio more but that was a cool toy.

here is the serial lcd display... it actually worked quite nicely for a long time... backlit too!