If I only had a brain
I could wile away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain
And my head I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain
I'd unravel any riddle
For any individ'le
In trouble or in pain.............
Since the day I saw my dad’s monthly
bulletin from NTS (correspondence school),I was consumed by it. The cover featured a new
telecommunication satellite. I remember having a great
time, reading it, then finding out my dad had kept all the past
issues.
I took the same electronics NTS course; I think it was ’71. I really got into it, particularly telecommunications; I started playing with walkie-talkies, CB’s, and somewhere around ’76 I bought my first computer, an Altair, and that was my foray into computers, full on. Assembling computers back then was not done by swapping cards. One of my pride and joys was a Heathkit/Zenith Microcomputer Learning System model ET-3400 ; it was designed to teach principles of computers and programming.
In 1982, I had both: a car and a computer….my next door neighbor was the foreman of the shop where he worked at, at the local power company’s electronics and communications office…and a good friend he was.
An Idea began: one computer would not be enough to do much in a car, but with prices falling and the availability of different enhancements, why not give one job to one computer…each computer could “talk” to each other and voila’.
The system had 16K of RAM attached to it and the
port was out of that section. The program reserved 256 bytes at RAMTOP for its
own use; mainly a Basic program. The connection to the ZX-81 port was done by
soldering the filters to the RAMport, as the DIN plug went to the frequency
filter.
The system was used to store voice prints, which was used to control the actions
of the program. So shouting LEFT, DOWN became common.
 Whenever
I could, I would stick a cheetah
board with a back-patch to each motherboard, to increase it to 80k’s |
 At
the edge of each board, I could either make a port replicator, or stick
one of these jobbies, to marry motherboards: depending on space. |
Mark I : The 1972 Mustang Grande (rebuilt in 1982 with first carputer)
I know they don't look the same, but my supercharger was better I bought a 1972 Ford Mustang Grande on its way to the junkyard. It was still running, and I needed a car. Even though it had seen better days, it was awesome; with its “pleather” interiors and 351 engine, it was screaming to be restored. It even came from the factory with racing stripes. I’m going to be truthful and admit; after seeing Mad Max “the last interceptor” I began to model my car after it. With the help of a crew of friends, we took it apart, put it back together and
had it in street-racing shape.
The
dreadfully
retro dashboard (even by 1980's standards) was painful.
This car featured a completely modular dashboard. I discovered modular plugs. Small things like this is very important to make it easier and cleaner connections.
This was my first carputer platform. Most of the systems were embedded electronics, with nothing flashy that showed. Unfortunately, neither did I take many pictures, because the car cost so much to re-build, I got paranoid.
I got to keep the system, as I had taken apart all the computer systems to begin building a new one based on a TI-99/4a. That project never flourished because I was looking at having to learn a whole new architecture.
Mark II
I first cannibalized the parts from the z-80 system, then I switched to a Motorola-based system.....I ran
a few applications off the Radio Shack COCO 2, but as I kept running it hot all
the time, I couldn't afford burned motherboards like the zilog ones. The coco's
started at $300, so I started scrounging for z80 systems.On this build I began to concentrate on comfort. BMW seats
for the front. It had a huge 460 Cu.In. engine that could launch the car into
frenzy. 
Mark III The 1979 Pontiac Catalina
Speaking of engines..this was another reactor. It had a
police package, so it flew I smashed into the dashboard a few times, hence the
copious
amount of foam.
At the time of the picture (click to enlarge), the whole dash was being prototyped. steering wheel was taped to see how it would feel covered in textured rubber.
The stereo was a Blaupunkt, with the head unit one of the first Bose units. notice the CoCo keyboard at the transmission hump.
The lessons learned from previous models quickly got me up to speed, specially finding out there were others who have been at it for the past decade or so. When I started meeting the others, they assumed I was a newbie to this. I saw a lot of the same engineering mistakes I made in the past, as well as many questions. It began to dawn on me that even though we had all this tech, we had the same limitations.
Here is a limited example of -some- differences in technology. - not necessarily improvements.
| Examples | Old tech (circa 1982) | Present tech (circa 2011) |
| Data transfer | Attempted Ham radio frecquencies | Broadband internet |
| Main computing component | Single IC Processor (Zilog Z80) = 16 HZ [overclocked] | Single core Pentium family 2 Gigahertz Processor |
| Peripherals | Home built controller | (2) Relay & 8ch Isolated DI USB Module |
| Sensor array | Analog modules | Digital / Analog circuitry |
| Internal (vehicle-specific sensors | Electro-mechanical | OEM control module-compatible ODB integration |