BTDT or had friends BTDT.

Based on my experience, you really want a laptop based design just for
the power filtering.  The guys I've known who've horsed around with ATX
motherboards and PSUs have had a heck of a time with power quality.
They've spent a lot of time fighting spontaneous reboots and other
mysterious behaviour.

You can also spend a lot of time horsing around with trying to get a
quality PC image on an NTSC LCD display.  If you spend a lot of money
and time, the best you can hope for is some mediocre output limited to
800x600 or so.

You can get an old Windows laptop and a Margi PCMCIA DVD decoder card
and have a much higher quality experience for less time and trouble.

Alternately, I have seen happy guys who've gone entirely NTSC.  Just bag
the PC and run console games and consumer DVD players, even your TIVO
can work great in this environment.

Ty Graham
'91 Syncro Westy w/ too much AV gear

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of Chris Pierce
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 6:20 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Thoughts--Iwesty

<< in-dash retracting monitors that are
 capable of VGA input.  For this reason, I'm leaning towards the in-dash
 solution provided I can use the display with a PC. >>

For this I might consider using a small desktop motherboard and building
it
myself. It would allow for expansion and keep the costs down.

As far as the monitor most PCs and Macs as well as all new laptops offer
"S"
video out for use in a video capacity. therefore I would suspect that
you
could buy a small Phillips retractable TV and wire it this way. this
would
allow for DVD MP3 ETC and the integration of the GPS through the PC
granted
that you have the proper software. I would put it all behind the dash or
run
long USB cables to a box built into the rear of the Van ie under the
seat or
whatever. There are portable folding keyboards and rollor mice that you
could
use for interfacing. I would build this into the Westy table arm
(probably
make my own platform that would allow it to swing around whilst in the
forward facing postion and not to ruin the original table for resale
reasons).

Dunno, just a thought.

Chris