i posted a while back asking for help and advice on a car pc... ive done research on different ways of doing it, different systems, mounting locations etc and i think i figured it out... theres still a few questions though, and for reference i have a 2005 dodge neon sxt

1: ive pretty much decided on doing a micro-atx pc with an athalon 64 3700+, 1 gb of mem, geforce 7800gt graphics card.... but for the hard drive would a normal desktop (3.5 in) drive be ok? it dosnt have nearly as much shock protection as a notebook drive (2.5 in) but has alot more space and is cheaper... my only concern is that if its on and i hit a chuck hole or w/e that it could hurt the HD....

2: i want to put it in the trunk of the car, but that presents one major problem... i cant really put a cd in, so is there a way to hook up a cd deck to a pc? or would it be ok to run a USB cable to the front of the car and have an external drive up front in the passenger area?

3: power. the system im looking at is gonna draw about 400W of power, and i dont wanna kill my battery so is it possible to hook up a second battery so that the alternator charges it also? and would capacitors help any? also what would the best way to convert the cars DC power to a computers AC power?

i think i pretty much covered most the different aspects of this project, but i could use some help

 

as for the power conversion I would go for a power inverter that could handle that sort of load, probably a 600 Watt one just to be on the safe side.

 

theres a company that actually make Car PCs, the unit is really small and is concied esily yet still simple to get to, I would give the link to it but the other forum it is on is having server problems. Once its back up i will post the link.