CF-53 newbie

Ajkula66 from thinkpads.com referred me to this place as the one to go to for all Toughbook related stuff, so here goes.. fwiw this seems to be my first post despite registering in 2007 (!)

I've recently grabbed a Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 (which will work well in the workshop and general outdoor stuff) and feel a little like a fish out of water. Tinkering with this is like learning another language after spending so much time with ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes, which has included things like doing a couple of SXGA+ panel conversions to some X60 and X61 systems, franken-T60s and other such things.

The main thing that's been perplexing me is how to get the WWAN mini PCIe slot to do something useful. One exists on the system board, with antennas and such available, but when I put a card in (Ericsson 5521gw) it can't find it. The closest thing I can see in the BIOS setup is a setting about optional features which is password protected, even though I haven't set a BIOS password.

Do Toughbooks need a modded BIOS like a ThinkPad does? Or are there a whole other set of tricks of the trade?

I'm also assuming the slot can't work with an mSATA SSD, as putting one of these in doesn't do anything either.

It could also do with a new CPU fan, and wouldn't mind adding a fingerprint reader; but if the steps involved in replacing the HDD with an SSD is anything to go by (cumbersome due to amazing over-engineering) I'm not looking forward to attempting either! I've found a service manual online for a CF-52; how different is the chassis between the 52 and 53 models?

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook Forum

If you are going to put in a WWAN card in well it really needs to be one from a Toughbook. These things are very picky when it comes to them.

 

You need to use a card from Panasonic,otherwise no joy. The hard drive is easy,pull the caddy and pop it open.Replace. Clonezilla to image the drive (must be the same size or larger) and you are done.

Failing that call Heartland Panasonic and for $35 they will overnight the recovery disc...easy. 52 and 53= apples and oranges.Different. I'm sure someone will comment on the fan.

 

That's right...will not work.

 

Wow, thanks so much for the overwhelming support and welcome!

from a bit of other googling I found that my card (a Dell Wireless 5550 HSPA mini-PCIe card) shows up in Windows Device Manager if you change the Wireless WAN ID field in the hidden BIOS menu to "00" from the default of "ff".

Getting the drivers for the Dell card (in a form that actually lets you install it on a non-Dell) isn't quite as easy as first thought; I found a few sites explaining how to extract the drivers out of the installer MSI:

http://www.sbbala.com/DellWWAN/Dell5530.htm
http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2011/05/27/installing-dell-wireless-5530-hspa-mini-pci/

then found someone who already did the background work!

http://forum.osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2152-wwan-dell-dw-5540-and-5550-driver-for-windows/

safn1949: thanks - I had already swapped the original HDD over to an SSD, and it was impressive how much thought went into shock protecting the drive in its little drive cartridge. Not the easiest laptop HDD swap in the world, but I've seen much worse even in run of the mill systems...

 

All is well now with the laptop, and it's back to work.. here it is while I'm building a CNC machine (which will eventually get its own rackmounted control PC it'll share with a 3D printer in the workshop)

Cnc by rek posted Mar 23, 2015 at 10:24 AM