CF-19 Touch Screen

Hey everyone! I had to dig around to find a decent forum for Toughbook users and that search led me here. I just acquired three CF-18s (two MK4s and one MK5 I believe) and one CF-19 (MK1 I believe.) I've been going through them doing pretty typical stuff. Wiping them, reinstall OS and drivers etc. The touch screens on the 18s didn't work when I got them, but the 19 worked until I took the back lid off to paint it. I noticed that the 18 lids were very easy to remove, but the 19 lid was quite stuck at the top of the screen which is where the touch screen wires route over behind the screen and plug in. I didn't really have to force anything to remove the lid and I didn't pry against anything important...I think. I definitely didn't pry against any wires either. Everything looks okay back there and it's plugged in completely. The driver for the Touch Screen says the device is working properly, but my fingers tell me otherwise. I was wondering how easy it might be to damage something back there that can result in loss of the touch screen or if there might be some commonly known troll causing problems like this. I assume the 18s were touch screen as well, but I'm not sure. The 19 is the only one that I know was working before I messed with it. If it's just broken, I'll probably leave it that way. After Googling and Youtubing those screens, it doesn't look like something I have any business tampering with. My skills barely got these things functioning properly again haha.

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook Forum

I think maybe why the 19 lid was harder coming off was maybe it was never taken apart before. You did say when you got the 18's the touch was dead so some one might of already had them apart...reason why they were not stuck. Not sure what happen when you removed the lid but I would go back and check every thing again and don't tighten the screws up too tight.
Also the best way to install the OS is to use the restore disk. It will save you so much time.

 

I kind of have the recovery discs for all four. The recovery disc for the 18 I have is generic for all CF-18 models. I say "kind of" because the CF-19 model I have doesn't quite match the models for the recovery discs for the 19s. I think this is because in their previous lives, they were Toyota Techstreams, and the models listed on the recovery discs are perhaps special configurations. The CF-19 I have is a CF-19CHBAXBM. MK1, 10.4 TS, 80gb HD, 512mb RAM, BT, Wireless Ready, XP SP2, North America. But the recovery disc is for CF-19CHD27BM, which I haven't been able to translate part of. It's MK1, 10.4 TS, D=?, 2=?, 7=?, XP SP2, North America. With those missing links relating to the HD&RAM, Options, and WWAN, I assumed the rest of the recovery disc was probably okay. I also have recovery discs for 19FHG27AM (MK2) AND 19KHR27AM (MK3.) I believe the middle characters must have something to do with the special configuration for Techstream, and one would probably be made for each MK. I used the one for the MK1 for my MK1, and for the parts I can translate, it seems like it should be the correct configuration. I took it apart a couple more times to check on the wires and the condition of things, and it really all seems okay. I may have just broken it which would be consistent with my luck. I appreciate that you took the time to offer advice.

Oh btw, I think I've figured out that all of my 18s have digitizer screens. I don't have any of those pens though, so I'll figure that part out later.

 

Update: The touch screen seems to be working, just improperly. When I touch the screen, the cursor will only ride along the left side of the screen. It will follow me vertically, but only sliding along the left-most edge of the screen. I tried the calibration a few times and after the sequence, it tells me to please do it again. This makes me believe that it probably is related to something I did inside...Oh well.

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Forum, sterbenlicht!

Touchscreen failure is unfortunately common with later CF-18 and early CF-19, along with other models of that vintage. One of Panasonic's few big mistakes. It is possible to replace the touchscreen panel. Our member Sadlmkr (Jeff) is an expert with them.

I think the 18's and 19's are some of the easiest models to work on. But watch out, these things can get addictive.

ETA: Pointer movement in only 1 axis is a symptom of touchscreen gone bad.

 

I have never heard of 1 CD for all models of the 18's . I have 2 CD's for each MK's...1 for XP and 1 for XP Tablet for digitizer . You do know the restore disk is just a image of the hdd when it left the factory so a MK1 (900mhz) would not work on a MK5 (1.2mhz)

The 19 restore disk should be right because if they were wrong it would tell you and would not let you install it.

Well the only way to figure that out is spend the $30-$35.00 . I would only buy one just to see if they all work.

 

I think I'm already hooked! And that's kind of a bummer about the screen. It looks like I may be considering touch panel replacement one day. Thanks for the help!

 

It's not a Panasonic recovery disc, they're Techstream recovery discs to re-image them for what they were intended for. I think any Techstream Toughbooks on the CF-18 models probably came with similar hardware configurations, and minimal options were included. I think that's why there's only one Techstream recovery disc covering all of the CF-18s. And I think you might be right about the recovery disc for the 19. Everything on it seems to be functioning 100% with the exception of the touch screen, which is my own fault. I'm sure I will purchase one these digitizers in the near future. All of the ones we use at work are touchscreen, and although useful, I'm not a huge fan. The screen seems thick and it loses calibration settings kind of easily. Not sure what we're doing to cause that though. It would be nice to see what the digitizer is all about.

 

I got my first CF-19MK1 digitizer last month and love it. I was told by a member here that he has never seen a dead digitizer screen before...better made maybe.

 

Hmm, well that's definitely something to consider. The digitizer sounds much more appealing to me. I might have to start focusing more on one of the CF-18s then. In all the browsing I've done, I haven't stumbled upon someone switching from touchscreen to digitizer. I'm going to look into whether that is possible or not. Either way, I'm absolutely addicted to these things, and I really don't even have much of a use for them yet haha. At work, we switched to brand new CF-31s, so I'm trying to come up with a good way to give these old things some purpose. I will absolutely figure out something. Thanks, guys!

 

Well I kinda stumbled upon my 19 digitizer, the seller was selling it as a dead touch screen but I noticed it wasn't a touch and he was selling it dirt cheap ($45.00) so I grabbed it and made a trade for a digitizer pen from a forum member here. Anyways good luck on getting them up and running.

 

Just a thought..Maybe the restore disk was created by "Toyota Techstream" It would make sense for a company that large to create a restore disk with their software on it. Or it's a "drivers" restore disk and not the OS.
..I would like to see a photo of the disk.....


https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/techinfo/html/prelogin/docs/ts/tsprodinfosheet.pdf

 

Yeah, they're all Techstream recovery discs. Techstream is just a program. It installs Win XP Pro SP2 or Win XP Tablet Edition along with a couple of Toyota Diagnostic programs. I'm sure only certain CF-18s were used by Toyota. The 18 disc installs Tablet Edition. I haven't used the CF-19 MK2 and MK3 discs since I don't have one of those, but according to the configuration, it's supposed to be Vista/XP downgrade, and I know all of our old Techstreams use XP. They're just the recovery discs that came with these Toyota Techstream Toughbooks. They don't actually say Windows or anything anywhere on them. It's just a disc that says Techstream recovery disc and has model numbers. I can take a photo of them later today after work though.

 

After you load there disk do you have to load any Panasonic drivers at all ??

 

If I use the Techstream discs, I don't have to load anything. It's ready to go. I just have to uninstall the Toyota Diagnostic programs and it's pretty much the same as installing whichever version of Windows is on that recovery disc. Before I knew the difference between Tablet Edition and standard XP Pro, I just installed my XP Pro on one of the CF-18s and then I had to start installing drivers. Going through the mess with those drivers wasn't fun, so I decided to use the recovery discs instead. It's pretty painless using the discs, so they are definitely the way to go with these things for someone like me with limited knowledge. I am curious though, if it originally came with Tablet Edition as these CF-18s all did, and the slot for the stylus is the larger slot like the digitizer stylus, then is it safe to assume these all have digitizer screens? I'm definitely going to buy a digitizer stylus to give them a shot. Hopefully that's the situation with them. This CF-19 is the oldest of the whole bunch with 30k hours on it, but of course that's because they stayed on 100% of the time. The screens were normally closed so the amount of that time that the screen was being used is much much less than 30k. With numbers this high, what other things might I notice diminished over those hours?

Oh, and here's a pic of two of the discs, but they're all the same.

 

Yes they all should be digitizer screens

That is a lot of hours for a MK1 . My MK1 has 18,000 hours on it and the LCD was not very bright so I replaced with a low hours one

Other than my LCD every thing else works great on it...max memory and a SSD, works great :thumbsup: