CF-29E boot hangs with new dvd drive

Traded for a new to me DVD burner with lightscribe yesterday.came outta a HP lappy, just swapped it into my cd-rom caddy.

anyway,during boot while the post screen pops up, it hangs on the "press f2 to enter setup" stage. if you go into BIOS and then exit, she continues on to windows just fine. I tested drive and it reads Cds and DVDs just fine, burned a cd last night too and no probs. I made sure windows was using latest driver today with driver update in hardware manager and i checked the firmware and from what i can find online its the latest and greatest. so why the hangup on boot at the post screen??

From discinfo:

DISCINFO VERSION : 1.6.1.6
VENDOR : HL-DT-ST
MODEL : DVDRAM GSA-4084N
REVISION : KQ09
VENDOR SPECIFIC : 
LOADING MECHANISM : Tray
SERIAL NUMBER : K0469JH2341
NUMBER VOL. LEVELS : 256
BUFFER SIZE : 2048KB
INTERFACE : ATAPI
RPC2 SCHEME : YES
STATUS : Set
USER CHANGES : 3
VENDOR CHANGES : 4
CURRENT REGION : 1
ANALOG AUDIO PLAY : YES
COMPOSITE OUTPUT : NO
DIGITAL PORT-PORT1 : NO
DIGITAL PORT-PORT2 : NO
READ UPC CODE : YES
MULTISESSION READ : YES
MODE 2 FORM 1 : YES
MODE 2 FORM 2 : YES
READ ISRC CODE : YES
READ BAD CODE : NO
BUFFER UNDER-RUN : YES
MT. RAINIER : NO
CAN READ CDR : YES
CAN READ CDRW : YES
CAN READ CDRM2 : YES
CAN WRITE CDR : YES
CAN WRITE CDRW : YES
CAN TEST WRITE : YES
CAN READ DVD-ROM : YES
CAN READ DVD-R : YES
CAN READ DVD-RW : YES
CAN READ DVD-RAM : YES
CAN READ DVD+R : YES
CAN READ DVD+RW : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-R : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-RW : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-RAM : YES
CAN WRITE DVD+R : YES
CAN WRITE DVD+RW : YES
MAX CDR READ SPEED : 24
MAX CDR WRITE SPEED: 24

 

The issue is Panasonic makes their CD/DVD drives as a master at the factory.
Almost all other manufacturers make theirs as cable select. Simply swapping drive for drive will cause your Toughbook to have an error upon boot… its the hang you are experiencing

Read this guide that Rick (NBR Toughbook) made

http://t2k.wdfiles.com/local--files/cf-28/dvd-upgrade.pdf




Alex

 

ahhhhh. well, guess im gonna have to make a friend who an solder LoL

 

I have modded like Rick does
And I have modded them this way


50-pin ATAPI interface connector for laptop and slimeline cd And how to convert a csel drive to m/s (master slave)

I have done over 100 in the last ten years, with no issues but
you don't want to screw it up if you are not good at soldering




Alex

 

looks like the rick way is easier?

 

Some adapters are different than the cf27/28/29 , so I find that the other way works good

I have modded cf-71/72/73/74 and cf-30 optical drives using the way I linked to as well as some of the cf-29 caddys



Alex

 

it's not terrible to do it the faq way. I would actually recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to solder, but hasn't yet. but that could just be me.... and of course, it's at your own risk.

 

@ interestingfellow

To do this you need a small tip soldering iron ,steady hands and a way of magnifying to see the contacts

Being over 50 myself and addicted to coffee I find it difficult but possible



Alex

 

OPPS!!!

Anvira warned:

Guard: Malware found

A virus or unwanted program
`HTML/Frame.aal' was found in a file.

Access to thiis file was denied.

Please select a further action

[Remove] [Details]

 

OMG, my norton didn't pick that up....

is my license revoked?

oh no, wait, that's cause I have a good hosts file that blocks malicious websites...... truckin on.

@Tomcat
I've soldered alot of stuff. and screwed up alot of it. But I believe, if someone wanted to be proficient at soldering, this is a challenging exercise that's still on the easier side of things. The only way to screw it up is to cook the board or solder the wrong thing. I used a medium sized cone tip on 40 watt with a fresh tiddle of rosin core solder on the tip, touched it for 1.5 seconds and went on my way (I left out the 20 seconds of line up). You are right though, I"m only 30, and those pads sure are tiny! I swear they moved around on me...

 

I did it this morning, ended up with a huge glob at first but finally got it worked out. boots correctly now and reads fine, will try burning tomorrow i guess. still wanna try the lightscribe also, im all giddy about it LoL

thanks guys!

 

I found a trick to soldering those small connections. I cut 2 pieces of Kapton tape and place them on both sides of the 2 connections I want to bridge. It seems to help keep from soldering more than I want to.