The machine for the tiki bar is actually in the garage on the other side of the wall with long cables. The monitor seems OK tucked up in that corner in spite of the weather. I do go through one every 3 or 4 years but I am not sure they last much longer than that anyway. I get them used from online surplus operations.
In the cars I have regular systems but I do go for as small a case as I can find and hack the board in that fits.
In my F150 I have an Acer 2195 that is about 4" tall. It stands up behind the seat.
The Prelude has a LAN branded server case that is really only about 2.5" tall with a socket 7 AT board hacked in it.
I took out the back seat coushion, put the machine on the floor pan on some carpet and pad and folded the seatback down over it. Nobody over 3' tall could sit back there anyway. I did put some blocking under the seatback so it will breathe and to take the load of the 10 bags of concrete I might throw back there off the PC.
They run on inverters straight off the "ignition" terminal so they go up and down with the key. Since I am not really writing to the disk, I haven't had a problem just dumping them. DOS is pretty good about that anyway, although the W/98 machine in the entertainment center and tiki bar get dumped too.
The advantage of the DOS systems is they are "key on" to "music" in about 10 seconds. The car systems run blind, no monitor. I just have a key pad to select songs by number, "next", "back", "repeat" or it defaults to random play.
That is about all the distraction I want in a car.
The tiki and house machines have a monitor and you can scroll to see what you want. That is it it the upper corner of the pic.
I never worried about bouncing these things around. When I was at IBM they did a study of hard drives and vehicles for the army. If the driver can take the shock, so will the hard drive. Just be sure the machine is fastened down. The secondary shock of jostling around is far greater than the shock transmitted through the vehicle body.
