I came across this, was wondering if anyone has tried it?

http://indashpc.org/new/adapters/car2pc-maz.html

Let me know!

Yup... I'm using it now... wrote my own media player front-end to manage all of my steering wheel and oem headunit button integration.

what i am thinking of using, still installing little things right now~_~, i was thinking of using their basic version to as i am unsure of how much i need the radio to control stuff when i can just touch the screen

http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v768/196/27/16733754/n16733754_39006905_531.jpg

I am now considering taking out the whole Bose Head Unit and going with JUST the PC... Do you guys know if this would work? Does the unit recieve its signals directly form the buttons on the steering wheel, or do they bounce back out of the Head unit into this adapter and THEN onto the USB?? Very specific question, i know, but this would answer all my questions!

... it plugs into the back of the bose head unit so you cant take it out and use the bose cd input without it

tamz, you're going to need to get an aftermarket amp and run the rca outputs to a soundcard on the carpc.

think he ment using the car2pc adapter for the audio interface without the radio, it receivers comands from the steering wheel and radio from the interface on the back of the radio. it doesnt have any special taps for the wheel buttons, so removing the the stock radio means the car2pc interface is render useless. There are other devices to tap the buttons that i forgot, what they are called.

hope that helps, i would like to replace my entire set up but outside my budget considering i still have a turbo to complete

yeh czar got my question answered... im going to be doing it very soon hopefully, replacing my whole head unit with a carputer... im just making sure everything makes sense before i go ahead with the mod... So as far as this device is concerned, it will be useless to me without the bose head unit... any other ideas? to keep the steering wheel buttons working with a carputer ONLY? no stock head unit?

might want to look up on the mp3car fourms for it , i think its possible, but dont remember how

Tamz273: Just a warning, for some reason the Car2PC adapter will not work in my 8. Car2PC's support has been an absolute joke. I wouldn't plan anything around using their product without testing it first. A lot of people on these forums have had no problems but it does not appear to work in every case.

I had to write my own communications layer using its native serial link. The out of the box media player and winamp plugins did not work with mine.

I'm a developer by trade so it wasn't that big of a deal. I figure if you're going to build your own carpc that you can probably handle writing a serial API using the media player activex control, or the new WPF stuff.

what realy ?!?!

i know on certain versions of the headunit firmware it doesnt work but that worries me. My headunit firmware version seems fine so i guess ill find out.

does it output to the lcd?

my headunit is 9.55 I believe. Yes, it does output to the LCD, but mine only does so because I wrote the routines that tell it to.