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Ok, sorry to not update, but I’ve been very busy with school non-stop for the past few weeks. Let me summarize what I’ve been doing since my last post.
My old 1ghz Athlon PC was not working very well. It was so old it had issues with hibernating and waking up. Also it took up a large portion of my trunk so I went ahead and bought a Mini ITX 1.2ghz Via EPIA MII 12000. :) Boy was that a lot better. Inside of the trunk there is a bracket that is intended for use with a factory CD changer. I ended up taking a sheet of plastic I bought from a local school supply store and cut it to fit inside the bracket. Then I drilled 4 holes and mounted my new motherboard on it. It fits very tight, but works. I would suggest a NanoITX board if you have enough money. Now on to the radio.
Anyway, so I also went out and purchased a Griffin RadioSHARK from our local geek supply store, www.x-tremegeek.com. The store is excellent and if you are ever in the Sacramento area I suggest visiting. I do NOT recommend purchasing the RadioSHARK. It is an excellent USB radio device for any home or office desk, but it is HORRIBLE for cars. It got horrible reception in the car so I thought I could wire an external antenna to it. I went to Circuit City and the guys in the radio shop sold me a Motorola to 2002+ Euro antenna adapter. I cut the motorola part off and soldered a mono 1/8″ male connector + wire to the end. On the RadioSHARK, theres tutorials online that tell you how to wire a 1/8″ jack on the back of your RadioSHARK to extend the antenna. Once again, it worked, but only if stationary (and you have to move around the cable to get reception). In the car I connected it all up and it would not work at all.
So for the last two weeks I had no radio. I commute around 65 miles a day in slowwwww traffic so after awhile the iPod gets boring. Also I love listening to Rob, Arnie and Dawn in the morning, so I went ahead and purchased the HQCT from mp3car.com. I got it last night and created a cable by disassembling an old 486 with serial cables to create a 5×2 header cable. I also went on Crutchfield.com and ordered a Euro-Motorola antenna adapter (again), two 10′ Motorola Antenna extension cables, and one Motorola->Euro adapter to connect to the HQCT. I mounted the HQCT in the trunk along with some other new extension cables I got on ebay. A few minutes ago I turned it on and the HQCT automatically worked! It is AWESOME. Works so much better.
Oh and one last thing. I got a new skin for RoadRunner. It is called Freedom 2.1 made by CdRsKuLL. You can get it on the FreeDrive website. It uses Macromedia Flash and it is very slick looking. Works great. I’ll try to post pictures when I have time, but for now check out the links in this last post and good luck to those that want to follow!
