A friend of my uncle who works in a Ford garage was so kind to set me up with the first part for this project: a broken Ford radio/CD head unit. Now I couldn't care less what functionality the radio has nor what it looks like, I just needed a double DIN radio frame to stuff the computerparts into.
This is what the fully assembled unit looks like:
The main thing to look for is the four latches that latch on to the dashboard. These are what keeps your radio from falling out, and are the reason I chose to gut an existing radio instead of manufacturing a custom case.
There's four of them in total. It's a bit hard to discern on the image, since I have a crappy camera that's built into my PDA, but they're simple springs with a little stub sticking out that acts as a latch. When depressed, it releases its grip, and the radio can be slid out of the bay.
These latches can be reached through 4 small slits in the front; gotta take that into account when I mount the LCD and make the new front, but that's still a couple of months off... The slits are marked in the next picture, again a bit hard to discern. What the mechanic does when he needs to remove the radio is take a piece of sheet metal that's shaped to fit the slits, and presses it in. This piece of metal pushes the latches inwards, thus releasing their grip on the dashboard.
First though, we must disassemble this beast. We can remove the complete radio unit from the front by removing the screws marked with black lines here. There's an identical set on the other side. These are all that keeps the radio unit attached to the front.
We separated the front from the rest of the unit. There's only 2 ribbon cables that need to be removed first.
With the interface cables disconnected, this is what we get: a cleanly separated front piece.
The holes for the screws we removed to detach the front from the rest can be used to attach a new custom case to the front. We can't use the original case since a Mini-ITX board wouldn't fit anyway; it's barely 17cm wide on the outside, and that's not even discounting for the space the heatsink occupies, so the original case is of no use to us.
Too bad, little fellow, but you are just something I can not use. To the trashbin!
To separate the plastic front from the front mounting kit with the latches, we need to remove just six more screws.
Once they're gone, we're left with this:
Odd, you get a complete radio, thinking you'll just gut the insides, tap some thread for the standoffs that are gonna hold the mainboard in place, make some holes to mount the harddrive with screws, and be done. What you get is something that looks like this when you remove everything you got no use for...
But that's life, I guess... Seems I gotta make a custom case after all. Before I start working on that though, it's wise to do one last reality check before I continue my work, to see if a Mini-ITX mainboard could realisticaly fit in there. Tight fit, but manageable. The piece of cardboard is 17x17cm, the exact size of a Mini-ITX mainboard. As you can see, it fits with a few millimeters to spare, but I can produce a case that's quite a bit wider, and just narrows down to a little more than 17x17cm at the front where the screws take hold.
So there we go; the first steps are taken, and the project is underway. The next update will probably take a while, since I can not afford the Mini-ITX mainboard just this month, and I still need to make a case. Lucky for me, I got shitloads of sheet metal from cases of old computers I can cut up and bend to make the case from, so I could start doing that over the weekends once I got a decent blueprint made.
Maybe starting with the hardware, and worrying about the software later might seem like an odd choice. Heck, it is, actually... What if I finish the whole hardware setup, only to find out I just don't have what it takes to design and code a decent frontend? Well, I'll have wasted arount 1000 euros on this project for nothing then... On the other hand, focussing on the hardware now ensures I'll actually do the software part quick, because there's nothing as frustrating as having the complete hardware sitting there doing nothing while your car is still completely lacking in any form of audio system.
