From a plethora of solutions all over the Internet, I found only 3 that actually seem to work.

Solution 1 – disable serial mouse in Device Manager
Boot Windows XP as usual. Windows installs the serial mouse driver and the cursor gets crazy. After the system finishes booting, unplug the serial device. The mouse cursor should return to normal. Open Device Manager (Start / Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device manager), expand the branch labeled ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ and there you will find the false serial mouse. Do not uninstall it, as it will be detected again upon restart. Simply disable it. Windows will remember not to use that device again.
Plug back the serial device and restart Windows.

Solution 2 – edit boot.ini file
Open boot.ini with your favorite text editor (it should be in the root of your C: drive, sometimes hidden as it is a system file). Find a line similar to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” and add /fastdetect to the end of the line. This should turn off serial mouse detection on all com ports. You can also use /fastdetect:comx (where x=actual com number) to disable detection on specific com port. You can find the details here. Note that various workarounds on the web suggest using /NoSerialMouse or /NOSERIALMICE instead. This switches will not work as they were created for Windows NT / 2000 and are not allowed in Windows XP.
Save the modified boot.ini file and reboot.

Solution 3 – Microsoft COMDIsable tool
Apparently the 2 solutions above do not work in 100% cases, so the guys at MS have come with their own solution, called COMDisable. It’s a small application designed for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or later that allow you to turn off serial mouse detection via command line.
comdisable /list will list all available com ports with their status
comdisable /disable COMPortNumber or comdisable /enable COMPortNumber will disable/enable a specific com port you select.
After running the command, simply restart the PC.

As I said before, some of those solutions may not work for a particular case. The good thing is they can be applied all together, in succession. This way I am sure you can leave this annoying serial mouse problem behind for good (as I did).

Well, this problem is instantly solved by a friend of mine who bought a while ago a Epia board from cartft.com for a similar project but never had time to complete it and is planning to sell. So, here I am, the new owner!

VIA EPIA MII12000G

Here’s the config:

VIA EPIA MII12000G with Via C3 1.2MHz CPU
512MB DDR266
60GB laptop HDD (PATA)
M1-ATX power source
VOOM case (blue edition)

Now that is a pretty decent configuration (at a fair price, I might add), except for the HDD. This is the first thid I will trash! In my opinion a regular laptop HDD is a completely waste for in-car environment. As a matter of fact I have always been a fan of solid state devices. Unfortunately these things are very rare and/or expensive right now so I’m taking an alternate route: CF!

CF cards have become cheaper and cheaper over the years, I have a lot of brands to choose from and they have 3 huge advantages over regular HDDs: 0 ms access time, little power consumption and solid design, virtually unaffected by vibration and with broad range of working temperatures. Of course they also have 2 drawbacks: relative small reading/writing speed and limited write cycles.

But wait, there are solutions! The actual read/write speed is not that crucial, especially when combined with 0 latency time. There is a very thorough review of CF cards/readers speed written by Hans-Jürgen Reggel on his CARDSPEED webpage. You can see that top rated CF cards have nice reading/writing speeds, but only when paired with high quality card readers. Well, there is a catch here. You see, the CF interface is basically derived from the actual ATA interface. So, for the best performace I am going to use a CF-PATA interface, in fact a simple pin-to-pin PCB with a few resistors and a LED.
The closest source for these adapters is Sorinescu.net, a local importer of adapter boards.

There is also some concern about the fixed/removable feature of CF cards with Windows. I plan on using a tweaked version of Windows XP and this OS sees the CF card as either a fixed disk or a removable disk. The problem is that booting from CF requires it to be used in fixed disk mode for the Windows swap file to work. Anyway, I am planning to use no swap file at all. The same issue applies for the hybernation system file and I am planning not to use that either. The system will simply cold boot each time the engine starts. With serious tweaking of the OS and applications, the boot time should not be unbearable.  For those of you who plan a similar system but need swap file and/or hybernation, there are solutions to overcome the removable disk problem.  More about that in the future software section (post).

The limited write cycle of CF cards is a serious problem. Most of these cards have an average of 100k writing cycles before they wear out and go bad. Most modern CF chips have the ability to spread the write data to unused cells to minimize the chance of making too many writes in one place, but even with that optimization, in a swapping-intensive system, a card like that can be destroyed in a week of continuous abuse. Of course there are industrial-grade CF cards that are certified for a million write cycles or more, but they are expensive, slow and relative hard to find. Cartft sells such a card, made by Transcend (you can check it out here).
The answer here is EWF (Enhaced Write Filter). It is basically a component developed by Microsoft for Windows XP Embedded but it works perfectly on Windows XP. It is a low level driver superimposed over the HDD driver that chatches all read/write operations. Read operations are passed to the HDD driver and write operations are cached in RAM. For a lot of written data, memory overflow may occur, but it is not the case for a carPC. Another feature of the EWF filter is that written data is lost on power off, unless specifically committed before shutdown. This is a very good thing for car environment because it renders the OS data read-only and transforms a potential harmful reset or accidental power loss into a simple harmless shutdown. With EWF, the system will ALWAYS start in the original state.

HOT TIPS!

There is a catch with these cheap chinese CF-to-IDE adapters. They are generally two slots adapters. That means that you can use 2 CF cards at the same time. The adapter takes over one IDE channel and so, the cards are seen as the MASTER and the SLAVE drives on that channel.
The first problem is that you can not tell which is which. The adapter has a jumper for selecting the master/slave option of one card (in single card operation) but it gets confused when you use 2 cards. I had problems with BIOS not detecting one of the cards or even both in 2 card configuration.
The second more insidious problem appears when you make more than one partition on a card. The CF card itself is treated by the PC as regular HDD, so you can organize your data any way you want, even creating more than one partition. This works with a single card only. In dual card operation, the second card simply vanishes from this world.

It took me almost 5 days to sort all these things up and decide I need a second adapter to suit my needs (and another 2 days for the adapter to arrive). The planned setup is as follows:

Kingston Ultimate 4GB

1. The fastest card available takes the first IDE channel. It is split into 2 partitions. The first one (as small as possible) is protected by EWF and holds the OS with a little free space as slack for future configs. I estimate 3-400MB for the nLited WinXP and another 4-500MB for a few installed applications. This takes me to a max 1GB partition.
The second partition on this card is not protected and is used for the applications that need writing (GPS routes, data logs, etc.). This partition should be as big as possible to maximize the spread of written data and to minimize the chance of cell failure due to high write cycles.
Both partitions are formatted with FAT32. Why? Because I took the time and installed 2 Windows XPs on 2 different partitions, one formatted with FAT32 and the other one with NTFS. FAT32 proved to be marginally faster and a great deal easier on HDD writes than NTFS, which offers greatly increased security, file indexing, access time-stamp, file–by–file compression, quotas and encryption. And these features cost a lot of HDD work, even when all disabled. So FAT it is!

The card that suits the requirements with a decent shipping time (readily available here, in Romania) is Kingston Ultimate 4GB 266x. The 4GB total space is also suited to making Ghost backup images on a regular USB stick, as this card is a main component of my carPC and data loss here means a lot of trouble afterwards.

Lexar Professional

2. The second fastest card (8GB or more, emphasis on size first, than speed) takes the second channel. It has only one partition, unprotected, for media storage. File system? … You guessed, FAT! This card is not critical, as it holds only media. It may even be swapped in future with a different card / size.

The card that suits the requirements with a decent price is Lexar Professional UDMA 8GB 300x.
This card is actually faster that Kingston, but for some obscure reason the PC refuses to boot from it. It succeeded once or twice but most of the times the BIOS freezes to a black screen. Weird! It must have something to do with that removable/fixed drive thing…

Hot tip!

If you plan a similar setup, please keep in mind that these cards are not meant to be hot-swapped. I mean the CF card itself is, but the IDE subsystem it is not!! So you are most likely to fry something if you attempt to remove the card with the PC running. Even if both the card and the IDE survive the swap, the OS will never read the data on the new inserted card until restart. So be careful!

Now the intimidating question!
Why for crying out loud am I not using the integrated CF card reader on my Epia mainboard?
Why all that hassle with CF to IDE adapters and master/slave drives, and partitions, and all the headache.
Because in their infinite wisdom, the guys at VIA made the onboard CF card reader UNBOOTABLE!!! You don’t believe me? Check out the manual, it’s written there, in plain text. But we never read the manual, do we? I confess it took me a while to discover this fact, and I learned it the hard way, but it’s true. In fact, it’s even better, the onboard CF card reader is only capable of PIO mode. It is useless for any high speed DMA card like mine. PIO mode is so dumb that it wastes most CPU time (even 80% on my Epia) on data reading only, with about 1/4 of the card rated speed. Go figure!
How is that possible? Well, I really don’t know, I guess it’s one of the greatest mysteries of humankind!

Here are some pictures of my single-card dual-adapter setup:

Now for the read/write performance, here are some graphs:

My second and last add-on to the base hardware beside the CF adapters is a low-profile wireless card, a Linksys Wireless-G PCI adapter. The card fits perfectly in the designated slot, except being 1mm too high to squeeze into the Voom case. Damn!

Well, did I mention that I am pretty handy with an angle grinder? Really, no kidding! I grinded about half mm from the bottom of the PCI connector to allow the card to sit even further down in the PCI slot and another half mm from the unused upper part of the PCB. This got me pretty close to the traces on the PCB so I covered the entire upper half with isolating duct tape, just in case.

Now it fits nicely into the Voom case.  ( Hey, it still works, I checked, so don’t tease me! )

As for the board connectors, I used only the two internal USBs. One of them connects to the GPS receiver and the other to the IBUS adapter. This setup frees the easy access back-panel usb connectors for other tasks such as USB keyboard/mouse/stick or a USB cable to the front of the vehicle. I am not planning on using any USB hubs.

The M1 power source sits nicely over the two CF-IDE adapters. I set it up in the 4/45 configuration, that is 5 sec start delay (after key on) and 45 sec shutdown delay (after key off). This leaves me enough time to start the engine before the PC starts to boot. Anyway, I find the M1 PSU very tolerant, as it manages to survive the crank of my 3000cmc diesel with the PC running perfectly. I really like that!

One final thing: power requirements. First of all, let me tell you that the connector/cables Voom case came with are a total crap. The jiggle a little in the connector and are pretty short. So I manufactured my own cables, with crimped and soldered connectors and decent length.

A final word goes to power consumption: idle state – 1,65A (~20W) and full action (playing a movie full screen) – 2,5A (~30W). That’s pretty cool I guess, almost half of a low beam headlight bulb!

Of course you remember my first success on showing for the first time a ghostly greenish-tinting zombie like XP background on the on-board display of my BMW. Well, that was obviously not what I had in mind, so I have to really understand how the signals work there.

I am sure this little guy will be useful.
Please keep in mind that I am not an electronics professional, just a mere DIY enthusiast.

Well, after a quick setup of the probes I’ve got my fist images:

Analyzing the signals and making various calculations of timings and voltages I have finally been able to understand the problem. The best explanation is the next image:

BMW display image superimposed to the green signal

You can clearly see now that the voltage of the signal is not what can be expected. It has a shift (or delta, or bias, I don’t know the proper term in English) of about .5v that leaves the sync signals to lower voltages and elevates the white level to about 1.47V. This shift is present on all channels.

That’s why my first image was so bad.

Than, with the aid of the scope and PowerStrip I tried various settings for my video card to get a better image. I eventually got rid of the rolling effect and I minimized the greenish tint to some extent but the quality of the signal did not get even close to that of the original.

I first built a testing image and I started analysing:

The second image you see is the green channel of the ATI card with the sync multiplexed. You can see it is completely different from BMW RGsB. The sync is positive in the picture. If I set it to negative, it screws everything up.
The third image is the green channel of the Matrox card with the sync multiplexed. It has a little resemblance to the BMW signal except for the voltages. The green is ok but the red and blue channels are unchanged, the same as ATI and completely different from BMW.

So, it looks like the end of the road here. I understand that a simple solution is not possible. This is also where my electronics knowledge ends. Of course a device can be made to shift the voltages of the Matrox to correct levels, and with the help from PowerStrip I am sure a good image can be obtained.
But I don’t have the time or the knowledge to design/manufacture/test such a device.

More important, I have to be realistic here. If such a device could actually work flawless, it is entirely based on an old graphic card, subjected to automotive environment. You see where I am getting? If the video card does work perfectly, it is still an old PCI card, that demands an old computer, a PIII maybe as a base, subjected to automotive environment. If it work perfectly, well… let’s not forget that the actual BMW display is 400×240 so much of the detail of the original image is lost. Of course it would be better than composite but not as good as it could be. A lot of IFs there!

Well, if you are interested in what CAN really be done, you can visit the web page of Bengt-Olof Swing, another BMW CarPC enthusiast which has achieved marvels by replacing the original BMW monitor with a high-resolution one. He was a major source of inspiration for me a lot of times, thank you and good work, Bengt-Ol’ Swing!
Anyway, what he has done is way beyond my abilities.

You can also visit jlitko’s page. He’s went the risky way, with a PIII and a Matrox. He managed to build a pretty decent machine but I don’t know the status of his CarPC now…

Well, taking all that into consideration, I am afraid the old composite video input I so strongly despise is the only practical solution.  I must admit it is hard for me to let go this quest for perfect RGsB but I agree there is a difference between what CAN be done and what IT’S WORTH to be done.

So, I have decided, composite video input it is! This little side quest is over. Back to my main project!

After some documenting on the Internet (none of us EVER buys anything without documenting first, right guys?) I decided that the best bang for the buck is a FM encoder with RDS and USB port. This way I have easy access to my music with one or more usb sticks and I can also see on the display the current playing mp3.

The most suitable for the task seems this one: Sound Fly Pro FM encoder.

It has all kind of features, it reads mp3, wma, it even has a remote control (mainly used for folder navigation or fast forward).
Now for the USB stick part, I decided to pair the Soundfly Pro with Kingmax’s “world smallest USB flash drive” (yeah, right!), 2Gb in size:

You can see that Sound Fly comes with an attached cigarette-lighter socket, as most FM encodes do. Well, this socket it too long for the location I am using it into, as it makes the device hover about 2cm (1in) high over the center console in my BMW so it looks like crap! Really.
It is also very unreliable and unsafe in that position as it moves a lot and conflicts with my right wrist when using the Steptronic lever.

Well, after a few minutes of testing I decided to relocate it to a better position, above my head, so to speak. To be more precise, I placed it on the overhead center panel, where the garage opener is located in US models.
I carefully made an opening there, so that the cigarette-socket fits invisible above the panel and I took the power from the rain sensor, located nearby. This leaves only he actual device on sight, pretty neat, I might add!

Now, about the sound quality (I am sure you are curious about that): it is acceptable. The lower frequencies are somewhat dampened, the high frequency are pretty decimated but the middle ones are OK. Imagine the best audio tape you may get, with zero background noise and you get the idea.

Talking about reliability, the device works perfectly in high temperatures as well as below zero. The sound quality is consistent, regardless of the temperature (the device heats up pretty much in heavy use).
One thing I did not like, it seems very sensitive to voltage variations, it never survives a crank. It stops playing, throws errors reading the stick, and so on. I have to be careful and turn it on only AFTER I start the engine, or I may fry something…

Well, bottom line, music is back on, bearable quality, now back to may CarPC project!

Contains Technical Information System (TIS)…this includes technical literature of repair manuals (from E36), Service Information Bulletins (from 1988), Technical Reference Information Bulletins (from 1988), Technical Data, Tightening Torques It uses a 486DX2/50MHz running on a UNIX based operating system. Monitor is a touch screen type. 500mb hard drive, one 3 & 1/2″ floppy disc drive. Two CD ROM drives. Two Future expansion slots. Contains backup batteries, Air conditoning unit, printer, MoDiC station, and various diagnostic cables.

BMW group tester one (GT1) is the special-purpose tool of BMW Series.

Gt1 is supplied with a Pentium based laptop PC on a Windows platform connected to a high specification communications and measurement interface.

GT1 has complete coverage of ALL BMW systems. Many of the original electronic systems on modern vehicles can now be re programmed using software; historically any changes to rectify software problems would involve a new ECU which would be purchased from the parts department . The BMW GT1 system allows the programming of all BMW car ECU’s to fix software or to install a blank ECU to a repaired vehicle. GT1 is also the only system that provides all diagnostics and programming for the very latest BMWs.

BMW GT1 software kit comprises of five system, TIS system. DIS data system ;diagnosis system. Measuring system and manangement system. You can to test and check data information same time in GT1

Test function; Read faulty code, clear faulty code, data stream, activate state, programming, component test, maintenance data information, components location, wiring diagram etc, TIS AND DIS ARE include all of the system diagrams of all of BMW cars, Components location, maintenance methods and coding information.

This diagnostic equipment is manufactured by Seimens as a part of their SDIS Diagnostic and Information System. This is the most complete system tester for BMW’s. It reads and resets faults, reads component values, triggers components (actuator test), substitutes values, identifies computer hardware and software, performs coding and programs computers. It is also integrated into the service writers program and the parts department ordering programs. It covers all systems found in the car that can be accessed by electronic means. New versions have a satelite uplink for updating information and programs. The tool can be usually bought only by authorised dealer.

The first stop was the HackTheIBus Yahoo group, an unbelievable community with tons of information on the subject.
Here I learned that my OEM LCD is actually a Sharp LQ065T9BR51LCD (you can find its datasheet here) with a native resolution of 400×240. That’s pretty low, I might add, for 2001 OEM equipment. The truth is the display overcomes this handicap with quality. It works perfectly now, after 7 years in temperatures ranging from -20 deg to +60 deg C and that’s sometrhing.

I also learned that it requires a sync-on-green signal, or RGsB. That is a normal three wire R+G+B signal with sync multiplexed with the green channel.
If you want to know more about video signals (which I did), you can find very good background information on the INLINE INC Tech Center Technical Notes webpage.

So this it the first problem. Any normal PC video card has at least 5 wire signal output (Red, Green, Blue channels, Horizontal and Vertical sync). Most (if not all) of them also have extra communication channel lines, also known as VESA DDC (VESA Display Data Channel, a way of enabling the monitor and graphics card to communicate with each other). That means I must find a way to output this weird RGsB signal … and with that shitty resolution.

A few minutes with Google revealed that THERE ACTUALLY IS such a breed of video cards, made by Matrox. Check out jlitko CarPC project page, he is using an old Matrox G200 in his setup.

Long story short, it took me almost 2 weeks to get my hands on a working PCI Matrox Millenium card. This card was made in 1996 but still rocks. Now for the resolution, the only way is PowerStrip, as it turns out after countless hours of reading posts on mp3car.com. Good thing this PowerStrip is shareware so you can test it well before buying it.

Unfortunately it wasn’t much until I learned that my Matrox drivers will not accept 400×240 resolution and Windows would throw me away with compatibility VGA mode. But wait, there is a catch. If Windows won’t allow me to use 400×240, maybe it likes 800×480 instead. But how can double the resolution work with a 400×240 monitor? Well, we can cut the horizontal res in half by doubling the pixel clock and  the vertical res by using interlaced mode. Nice trick, eh? Well, it turns out that Matrox Millenium drivers don’t accept 800×480 either (this may be due to small pixel clocks required). So, there’s a no go here.

I turned to an old PCI ATI then, also without any success with 800×480. Even my old trusty ATI Rage128 AIW refused the resolution! Than I remembered that my laptop has a somewhat newer video card with dual RAMDAC, one for the onboard LCD and the other for the VGA connector. The R300 on that laptop accepted the resolution with correct timings. Oh … finally! But wait! How am I supposed to get RGsB output on my ATI?

Well, an hour with Google, and here it is: the CIB interface. It does exactly what I need. But wait! 199 euros??? Mmmm… Hell no! I must find something else.
Another few hours with Google and here we go: good info here, here, here and here. The simplest schematic here with good explanation too.

Let’s try it! I bought the parts, I made a quick and dirty setup on prototyping board and WHOA!!! there it is, my first XP background on the BMW LCD. Tadaaaa…. Well, not so fast! The image was a mess. Continuously rolling, with a greenish zombie tint, with poor brightness and contrast but lots of noise, the image was horrible.
Unfortunately another 2 hours of work to make a labored setup of the schematic, with proper soldered connections and good isolation, brought no improvement at all. So this was clearly NOT the way to go. DAMN, that’s over a month wasted on that!

Back to Google again.

“Well, it’s time to put that wide display to a new use, it’s time for a carPC!” I told myself. “It has been standing there far too long showing only some uninteresting OBC data”.

After countless hours of googling and documenting, and after a few new dozens of bookmarks in my favorites folders, I started planning. “Planning is always a good way to start” I told myself.

Soooo… What it is good for?
First of all, I must confess that even now, after 7 years from the production of the last E38 that rolled out out the factory doors, BMW still has not provided us, the owners, with a decent navigation software (and maps) for Eastern Europe. E38 was made to be relaxing, to enjoy driving without the hassles of an extra GPS dangling from the windshield, in constant worries of thieves, of battery power remaining or direct sunlight damage.
So this is the main thing, the CarPC must provide quality GPS navigation for Romania (and entire Europe).

The second thing is multimedia. CDs are obsolete now, mp3 rules. And ogg. And flac, and vma and so on.
And avi of course. Not for me, for the passengers (yeah, of course!). And mpeg4, mkv, asf and wmv. Oh, and flv, Youtube of course. And why not vob? Well, you get the idea… And of course GPS navigation.

The third thing is … mmm … geek..iness. There’s nothing like showing live ibus data to my (boy)friends on the onboard display. And wait, this is the best: there’s absolutely nothing like showing my (girl)friends pictures with my 1-year-old daughter on the onboard monitor!!! And don’t forget what BMW stands for: Brings Me Women. Mmm… and …. did I mention GPS navigation?

Well, finally, wireless connectivity would also be a good thing. It allows quick management of mp3s, convenient setup changes from my office desk, internet access/VoIP from remote places when available and, why not, it helps boosting the geekiness rating.

Ummm… and last but not least: GPS navigation.