CF-51 MK3 Video driver with ATI video? sub question on WiFi

Hi Folks, I have a CF51M3 that I put together last year with W7 and got everything to work, including hacking the Intel video bios for a WS external monitor. I also have another one that I bought off fleabay around that time with a 2.0cpu, ati vid card and high res display. I've got some things I want to do that are slightly more graphics intensive so I finally got around to trying to set up the flea bay unit. I imaged the drive from the other machine for safety and then just swapped drives first to see what would happen, as opposed to starting from scratch. I had a ton of work into getting the W7 to run the way I wanted it to so I was not inclined to start from scratch if I didn't have to. Surprisingly everything seems to be OK except I have no WiFi and just a generic video driver.

So first the video. What driver is the best for the ATI? I tried to load the ATI driver but it says it won't load onto the toughbook and to contact Panasonic. In my experience the manufacture driver is usually better than the Panasonic driver but maybe not?

I spent many many hours getting the WS display to work with the old setup. I'm not looking forward to trying that again!

I've believe you folks figured out last time that this was a military unit not shipped with WiFi but I don't remember what my options were for installing internal WiFi. Perhaps that should be it's own thread?

 

Ador will probably be able to answer this. He has limited access to the internet at the moment so it may be a few hours before he responds.

To sart off with the wifi, first of all get the same card that the machine came with. See if it works, if not then you will need to flash the bios.

 

With the older toughbooks and windows 7 you will have problems trying to install the driver straight up by running the exe. The problem is with the ATI catalyst control center. Just don't install the control center. make sure the files are unzipped and them install them from device manager. Give you the correct ATI driver with out control center.

Also the best performance driver you can get is the "omega Drivers" google them.

On wireless. Is it showing a card in the bios? If it is try resetting the bios to factory defaults.

On all of my machines I like to do fresh installs on them all. I keep a 32 GB flash drive with all the basic stuff I install or use to fix other computers like offline antivirus installers and my tweak tools.

"night" "time to hit the bed, had a radiator fan motor break and take out a radiator" "had to fix it, on downtime""imagine a 400 lbs electric motor breaking it's mount with a 6 foot dia fan going 1100 RPM. It wasn't pretty"

 

Hi Folks - I'm sorry I did not respond. I thought I had set this to email me if anyone replied and since I didn't get any emails I didn't think anyone replied!

I have it working with the ATI driver from the US panasonic site. I did not go further than that but I'll look into it more now with this added info. The driver is very basic and does not recognize when I doc the laptop. I have to manually adjust the screens. On the plus side it is no longer crashing the USB ports when I dock. Not sure how that works out but I'd almost rather do it this way than have to disable/re-enable the USB ports every time I dock. At least it has 1920x1200 right out of the box so I didn't have to spend days hacking the video bios for my monitor!

I may have a clean image that I can pull from to start fresh but I did have a major crash of my backup system that may have taken out my image with it. I'll be playing around with that later but right now this is working and I'm short on extra time with all the other PC stuff I need to do.

I don't believe this one shipped with WiFi. I've misplaced my support link where I can enter the model and be told exactly what it shipped with. Can I just get the mini PCI or even pull it from the other machine short term? I saw this on Amazon Amazon.com: Intel Pro/wireless 3945ABG Network Connection - Network Adapter - Mini-pci Expre: Electronics

I ordered a T7200 processor for it. I'll put that in here and put this in the old one, which I'm going to set up for my wife to use.

I'd like to upgrade to 3GB memory in this machine. Does the upgraded processor/clock speed effect the memory choice?

I also may need a hard drive upgrade. Has anyone tried a SSD drive in these old machines? Any improvement?

I did a quick search on the WiFi and did not find anything relevant but that could just be weak search terms. I also think I may have a CF-52 in my not too distant future as the prices seem to have come way down but for the moment I'd just like to get these two machines working as well as I can.

Basically I'll end up with

CF-51 T7200/ATI/3GB
CF-51 T2500/Intel/2GB
CF-51 Mark 1 with missing hard drive caddy

I do like these machines. Looking at what I can buy a new machine for is very tempting but I do use my laptop on the road and use it hard. Many drops from the truck seat to the floor, even falling out of the truck onto the pavement a few times. Never a problem. With that sort of owner abuse it seems a toughbook is still my best bet.

Edit - Just looked at the Omega drivers. Very cool and yet I'm almost afraid to try it as it IS actually working at the moment!

Edit#2 I tried the XP drivers but they apparently did not take in W7. I did not see W7 drivers. Also it looks like my clean image is gone so I'll be starting from scratch with the other machine. I wish I had taken better notes of which drivers I used as some worked and some did not. I know I also found some intel chipset drivers on intels site that fixed several things. Apparently I didn't take notes of that either.

 

Here you go Panasonic Mobile Computing Configure Products

 

That's what I needed! No WLAN from factory. I've got the CF-51 with WLAN apart. Easy to get the WLAN card. I could upgrade but I found the exact same card for $8.00 shipped on Amazon so that's probably what I'll do. I'm trying to figure out the CPU upgrade but so far I can't find a write up or youtube vid on it. But the T7200 came already so if I can do the CPU and swap the WLAN card I'm going to go ahead and get that done.

I found a few of the big threads on the CPUs for these things. No pictures but I think I got it figured out. I'll be finding out shortly. Still don't see anything about thermal paste. If I see any on the cpu coming out then I'll use it going in.

 

OK So CPUs are swapped. However somehow I managed to #*# * up the battery door on both machines ;( Idiot. They would not come off for me for some reason. When I finally pushed like heck they came off but apparently small bits of plastic came off too as they don't want to snap shut now. Oh well. A bit of hot glue or something will fix it. I swapped the WiFi card too and everything came up as it should. No further intervention necessary. So now it's to figure out what memory and hard drive for this machine and that should be about it.

ATI video driver never did work though. Still says it's from 2005. Again, I'm not sure I care but it would be interesting to test further.

Thanks for the help here and all the other threads that came up under a search.

Edit. Just opened up my normal windows for the first time since I started this adventure a few days ago. It had gotten to the point where the machine was crawling. Switching between apps was painful. The hard drive was nearly maxed as well so clearing up about 20gig made a bit of a difference before I swapped to the faster machine. Now it is snapping between apps. Really fast. But memory is maxed out with nearly everything I need open so adding at least a gig of memory is a minimum. My wife never really has much more open than a web browser and MS OneNote so she should be OK with the other hardware.

 

I'm following along here since I plan to do pretty much the same thing that you're
doing when I get a MK3. T7200 CPU, 4GB RAM, thinking about an SSD if there
is a good one at a reasonable price. Currently working on a MK2 that was advertised
as a MK3, fortunately it is very clean and the price was right but I am going to see
if the seller is willing to make an adjustment.

You mention 3GB of RAM, I believe that it is better to put in 2X2GB sticks since
they will run fully in dual channel mode even if you only see about 3GB in the OS -
or did you install a 64 bit OS then you'd see it all. I've not added memory yet but
I believe that this is the correct type, basically DDR2 200pin SODIMM more specs
here, I don't know if there are any known compatibility issues with other brands:
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Toughbook 51 DDR2 Series&Cat=RAM

My battery door broke also, it is a small nub that makes it snap in. I used clear
scotch tape to hold it for now and I think the end could be bent over a bit with the
heat from a soldering iron though it is probably not good for the tip.

Thanks to everyone here that is helping, excellent site!

 

The only problem with SSD drive is these units are still IDE harddrive. I don't think there is really room for an adapter in it, maybe with lots of the padding removed. I have all of the IDE pin ssd drives I see are low storage space.

 

No room at all even if you took all the padding out the IDE to SSD adapter is to high to fit in the caddy. I did try it and no way.

 

x2...........I've tried also.

 

It turns out that compact flash (CF) cards use an IDE interface but with a
different style connector. There are adapters to make them fit (even 2 of them)
the 2.5" format. Not sure if this is exactly 2.5" format:
Addonics Product: CF Hard Drive Adapter

I do think that this one is standard 2.5" format, and also claims to be bootable:
Newegg.com - SYBA SY-IDE2CF-NB25 Ultra IDE to Compact Flash Adapter
Edit: This is the one I had intended to link to, also these cards are essentially passive
so they will boot if the CF card used supports booting. There are comments stating that
some CF cards work and others do not, also some comments about it being slightly
large for the form factor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186098

The board is mainly wires, with an LED on indicator. I bought
a similar one off of ebay and tried it with a Kingston CF but it would
not boot in an old Dell laptop. I did not experiment much with it to
get it to work, I'd probably try the Syba or another CF card before
spending much time on it. I also came across the Delkin brand of CF
card and found out that they produce military grade CF cards so they
probably know what they are doing. B&H has them and I'd probably go
for 32GB then use another SATA drive for mass storage:
Memory Cards| B&H Photo Video

Delkin, I do not have any experience with this brand but I would be concerned
about using a good quality CF card. Here's a link to their site:
http://delkin.com/c-129084-memory-compactflash.html

B&H has their 500X speed 32GB card for a decent price.

This Transcend 32GB CF card also seems to get good reviews however there
are a few reports of failures. I prefer something more reliable:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208529

I just did a clean install of XP SP3 with no apps, and it is 7.2GB with 1.3GB of MS
uninstall files that could be deleted to test it on an 8GB CF card just in case I
have to try different brands to find one that boots.

 

I have used that before in CF-28's. used the short single compact flash adapter in three different CF-28's. I had two with 4gb, one with 8gb. They make an adapter that is the same size as a 2.5" hard drive that can take 2 or 3 compact flashes on the same adapter to add up your storage space.

 

Flash cards? Never even thought of that. Sounds like SSD drive is not an easy step.

No I did not go 64 bit and don't plan too. Had a hard enough time finding drivers for my old printers and such as it is. I also cheated with the other M3 by just cloning this machine and removing stuff my wife won't need. Much faster and it's working well for her.

I had wondered if one 1GB stick and one 2GB stick would create a problem. I've done different size ram in other machines and don't remember having a problem but maybe I was and didn't realize it.

Given all that I may just call it done. It's working quite well as is. I think the only negative is my battery life seems to have been cut in half! Not sure it makes sense to dump another $100 or more into this when CF-52s are under $500.

In case anyone is interested I saw a couple T7600s on Ebay for $75. Also someone selling 10 hard drive caddys for $25 each. If I want to resurect the CF51M1 I'll need a caddy and drive but at this point I'm not sure it's worth it.

Thanks again for the help, especially the long threads on the processor upgrade here and the other forum.

 

I am worried about reliability with the CF card but professional photographers rely
on them so perhaps they are okay.

You can mix 1GB and 2GB sticks as I understand it, but it is better to use 2 X 2GB.

Yes. I can understand calling it done, memory upgrade is easy if you decide to do
it later.

 

On my CF-28 as far as reliability with a compact flash my travel set up before getting my CF-29 was. CF-28 Mk2 with factory cisco 350 wireless, got a little over a hour on battery, pcmcia sdcard reader for extra storage (2gb) running windows xp sp2, 512 ram (256 x 256) I put a extra piece of plastic in the caddy so the metal parts sticking out of the adapter wouldn't contact the metal case of the caddy. I used this same basic set up for over 2 years before semi retiring the CF-28. I looked up a xp ssd guide and did what it said, also did lots of other tweaks to the os. It never gave one one bit of trouble. It booted lots faster than the original style 4200 rpm harddrive. I never ran any software to see what it would do. It's still in the machine today.

 

Thanks! That is good to know, do you happen to remember what brand of CF card you used?

 

Get a name brand card, I have bought the cheap ones on ebay to be used for Ready Boost and they were trash.

 

All three of mine were scan disk extreme. Make sure you read up on the speed differences on the cards. If you get the wrong speed card it will be a slug.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-CompactFlash-Memory-SDCFX3-004G-A31/dp/B0008D76L0

 

Thanks, I have a 16GB Kingston 266X on an IDE adapter from ebay, it doesn't
work in the old Dell laptop and it acts strange when put on the IDE interface of
a desktop - the size is not reported correctly. It works fine when I put it in a Card
reader. It only does about 18 GB/sec when tested under HD tune but at
least it does not have the seek and rotational latency times of a mechanical drive.
I'm going to try reformatting the drive as NTFS but I plan to use a new one anyway.

I'm going for a 400X or better next time around.

 

Most of these adapters have some pen jumper setting you can change on them also. You may have the wrong combo for the machine you are on.

 

Yes, I tried all the jumper settings but will do it again with it reformatted. As I recall
part of my issue was that the drive did not show up in the CMOS setup, but I just
read that others had the same issue, but when they went to load the OS it did show
up and work fine - I didn't get that far since I didn't want to waste the time.

I edited the previous post to provide the link to the correct SYBA adapter. Here it is
just in case anyone is interested. These cards are essentially passive so they will
boot if the CF card used supports booting. There are comments stating that some CF
cards work and others do not, also some comments about it being slightly large for
the form factor:
Newegg.com - SYBA SD-ADA45006 2.5" IDE 44-Pin To Dual Compact Flash Adapter

 

Stumbled across some IDE SSDs here, price is not bad there is one by Transcend
but I don't know the other brands:
30GB/32GB SSD from MemoryC.com

Just noticed that this company is in Ireland but they can at least be used to find suitable
drives and then search by model number to find a better source. They do also have larger
drives - they are not cheap.

Some comments here about reformatting a CF to make it bootable:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Fo.../thread/b8c869f3-b0ec-4d22-864d-04af7c549697/

 

Strange, all three of mine showed up in bios. Can't remember if I swapped the pin setting on it or not. It may be like some usb drive are and are not bootable.

 

Does the CF-52 suffer the same issue as far as SSD is concerned?

I'm still toying with memory and a hard drive upgrade. With SSD out of the picture it's more about how I want the infrastructure of all these machines to be and how much space I need on each one to do it, than any interest in more speed. I found a couple conflicts and killed those programs. That seems to have worked wonders as well to the number of hangs I was getting. But even before I did that even the major hangs were manageable because the machine now has enough horsepower to push through them.

 

SSD works well in a CF52. CF52 uses SATA hard drive. SATA SSD's are plentiful. I am typing this on mine right now.
I "should" do a fresh install Windows in the near future, but that's another story.

Here is a CF SSD. I have a 4gb one that I use in a PCMCIA adapter as storage.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digital-SiliconDrive-II-4GB-PATA-Compact-Flash-industrial-grade-/261137292256?pt=US_Memory_Card_Readers_USB_Host_Adapters&hash=item3cccfedbe0http://

How large of a CF or SD card will Win 7 recognize in a CF52 or CF30?

 

At 10,000 hours I think the back lighting on the display is a little soft, but I can't tell you what a nice machine this is compared to what I was using just a week ago. I'm in love with Toughbooks all over again! I think I picked up the laptop last year for $80. Best $80 I've spent.

 

And think the newest CF-31 and CF-52 have 2.8 I5 with ATI 7750. That is the best specs on a toughbook to date.

 

Just as an update, I was getting a random 20 second freeze with my CF52. It seems to have been the Intel SATA/AHCI driver iastor. I deleted it and re installed the stock Microsoft one. MSAHCI. The freezing seems to be gone.

 

Hi folks - a quick question on the hard drive options. I seem to remember that 320gb is the limit on these machines but I'm not sure why that's the limit? Also on pricewatch I can't even find IDE notebook drives. Everything is SATA. Any suggestions? Is this one of those things where I'm now going to pay a hefty price for outdated technology because of limited supply?

I got the WiFi card for the wife's machine today and put that in so it's coming together.

 

wd3200beve is a Western Digital 320 gb IDE or PATA drive. It's the largest new drive you will find. They were recently discontinued. Currently they cost around $125.00.

 

That is the highest I have seen in IDE. They are sttill around, newegg had 320gb IDE on sale before xmas

 

I think WD made a 500gb one for a very short time.

 

Thanks much. 160gb is only $15 bucks cheaper.

 

I'm guessing that you're aware of this solution where you can use a SATA drive in the
media bay - this is what I'm thinking of doing along with a small SSD but you have to
give up having the large SATA drive in at the same time as the CD/DVD:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/671264-cf-51-2nd-hard-drive-media-bay.html

I called this company and they do answer in Ireland, but they actually have a warehouse
in the US so you can order and even use ground shipping. I have not tried them but they
seem to have good ratings:
250GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch IDE/PATA laptop hard drive (5400rpm 8MB cache)

 

Yes I know about the 2nd drive and the issues. I know in a cf52 with a sata 2nd drive, the unit will not boot until you pull the drive. That gets old. I can't remember in the cf51. I don't think it will boot either.
After a lot of testing and 4 different 2nd hard drive adapters I have concluded that it's best to use an IDE for a 2nd drive. At least in the cf52 mk1,mk2. They came with IDE cd/dvd drives and for reliability it is best to keep the same interface.
Maybe I will bring my cf51 home from work and test it out. I can't remember how it performed. But if my cf52 won't boot with a sata drive in the media bay, I will be very surprised if the cf51 does.
Google the wd3200beve. It is available for less money and is a 320gb drive.

 

Doesn't look like they are really any less money. For now the 80s will work and I'll built up something local to keep the large stuff like iPhone backups on. The machines are running great though. I think for me the T2500 is actually a better processor as it's nearly as quick as the 7200 and appears to be better on battery life. I did adjust some power settings though and have some reasonable battery time back. It was truly awful for a short while there.

 

I thought the T7200 uses less power. I am not sure who it was but back 2 years ago when we all were building the 51's up a couple of us did test on the boot times, battery life and XP / W7 . With the T7200 boot times were much faster by 20 seconds (bootRacer) and battery life was better. Opening and closing programs were very fast and movies played so much better.

 

My responses were not scientific so I would go by what you remember. It's hard to judge as I changed several major variables at once. Either way, they are working quite well and the wife is happy, which is always good

 

Hey...that is all that matters. :thumbsup:

 

The T2500 has 151M transistors, and the T7200 has 291M they are both fabricated in a 65nm process:
AnandTech - Mobile CPU Wars: Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo

Most of the transistors are in the cache and it makes sense that the T7200 has nearly twice as many.
Interesting that it is a 64 bit processor which should require even more transistors but it is likely that
they came up with a more efficient cache memory cell. The article also mentions that there are
architectural improvements that provide higher MIPS/clock.

Did you happen to notice if the fan runs less with the T2500?

 

I have not noticed anything with the fans but I will add this. I've got an IBM 3A supply that came with the Mark1. With the T2500/onboard graphics machine the power supply is fine unless the battery is down below 15%, then it collapses when you plug it in to the laptop. With the T7200 and ATI combo that same supply crashes immediately no matter what settings I use even with a battery at 100%. Not exactly scientific but a somewhat valid observation. It's also time to find a couple more 5A supplies on Ebay.

 

My MK3 is here!!!!! Just noticed on the back is says 15.6V at 8.0 Amps, WOW!
Does yours say that? It would explain why a 3A supply is having trouble. I'm sure
8A is the absolute maximum perhaps charging 2 batteries at the same time and
with a full work load.

 

Yes I have an 8A unit that came with my first MK3 which was a New Old Stock unit with zero hours all in factory packaging.. The 2nd MK3 came with nothing. The 3A unit worked OK with the MK1 but it will not stay in rotation after I find a couple more 5A units. For the moment it's working fine for the wife's MK3, especially as she's plugged in all the time so no battery charging of any consequence.

 

128GB KingSpec 1.8-inch IDE CF 50-pin SSD Solid State Disk (MLC)

What's this thing??

 

There are lots of 7.5 amp IBM units used on fleabay. All you have to do is cut the connector off and put on the one Panasonic uses. I have 2 of them and they never miss a beat. I opened one up to replace the entire output cable for a professional look. To say they are heavy duty and VERY well made is a serious understatement. Very worthy of Toughbook use. Matter o fact, I bought an original Panasonic 5 amp unit because I wanted the OEM charger and was disappointed in the build quality compared to the IBM unit.

 

IBM Lenovo ThinkPad AC DC Combo Power Adapter Charger 73P4502 73P4503 Qty | eBay

I am really fond of these chargers. Car charger and wall charger in one.

 

Hey that's cool. Is that right end or do you have to put the correct tip on it? I'm not much into having to cut and solder the cable. Have a soldering station and bench, just don't like the look of it even with heat shrink. But that is a very cool setup and would be great for the travel bag.

 

Look at them good, the older thinkpads have the right end, the newer ones don't (but the voltage is still the same). From the picture it looks like the right end on it. The newer thinkpad ends are bigger.

 

I went ahead and ordered one of those just to see. I have a failed 5A unit here I can pull the plug from if need be. If it's right I'll probably order a 2nd one and another OEM 5A unit or so so I can have one for each road bag and have several around the house so I can always easily plug in.