CF-M34 disassembly?

How the heck do you get to the RAM, HDD, card slots, etc on this thing? I don't want to break it!

 

Remove the battery cover, battery, and then bottom screws, you're ready to work ! for tyhe screen and keyboard connectors, remove the hinge cover, then slide the kbd up.

 

Very cool, thanks. Once I have it in front of me I might be posting more questions!

 

Take every damn screw out....

 

I took every screw out. I have the battery out, screen off, keyboard out... and I can't get it apart.

It looked like the palmrest was separate so I tried pulling on that and snapped it in half

Is this thing glued together???

Anyone have a palmrest?? This laptop was MINT!

 

Some one should have chimed in before you started pulling things apart and warned you about the "hidden" screws that hold the palm rest to the main body. If you look closely, there are some VERY small screws under the palm rest that appear to be connected to nothing, when in fact, they hold down the palm rest. TB's are surprisingly easy to take apart, but you must go VERY SLOWLY, especially the first time you take apart a new model. Do you have the shop manual to follow? If now, let us know and there are several of us that can provide. If you need a palm rest, I can help as I have a couple of 34's that I use for parts. Take it the rest of the way down and let me know if you need anything else.

 

Well I found that you need to pry the bottom cover up to get it off. Did that and checked out the internals. Installed a new 80gb drive and tried my 16-chip 512mb stick but it's detected as a 256mb

The thing also won't boot from my USB CD-ROM drive. I have CD as the first boot device but I'm guessing this is too old to boot from USB... making me wonder how the heck you're SUPPOSED to do this!

So I need a palmrest and to figure out how to get XP on here! Also a 512mb stick sure would be nice.

 

If I remember right, max supported on the 700 is 512. I sent you another answer in your other post on booting with a cd, check it out also. PM me and we can talk options for installing OS and a palm rest.

 

I was able to boot from cd on the same model
What brand / model of usb cd rom are you using

256MB was the total ram in mine,I gave up trying modules ( I wasted too much money on incompatable modules) they are real fussy


Alex

 

It's a generic one. It does have a jack for an AC adaptor but I don't have one.

I have a Toshiba drive at the shop that has that Y USB cable. I'll plug it into a PC as well and see if that works.

The 700MHz is PC-100 correct? That's what's in mine at least. I tried a 16-chip PC-133 512 and it was detected as 256.

 

Correct ! MK3 is PC100, MK 4 to 6 are PC133, and MK7 is DDR PC2100/2700

 

Are you showing a TOTAL of 256 or 512? The 700 has 256 on the mobo, so your total should be showing 512 if it is detecting only 256 of the 512 stick.

 

The 700MHZ CF-M34 has 0 onboard RAM and only has 1 empty slot 256MB is the maximum it will accept.

 

Yes, I tryed 2 or 3 512mb modules....none worked for me



Alex

 

Correct, there is NO onboard RAM on the MK3 CF-M34. It has a single slot populated with a 256mb PC-100 16-chip stick from the factory.

When I put a 512mb stick in, it is detected as a 256mb.

 

My 933 is the only one I have that accepted more than the 256.

 

MK 5 & 6 have 256 on board and can reach 768 MB total with a 512MB PC133 stick. works well !

 

Back to the original reason for this post, turns out the palm rest has FOUR screws; not two.

Two under the battery, one under the hard drive, one under the motherboard.

 

I have recently got hold of a 512 stick for my m34j it too shows 256 on the bios, but it's better than the stock 64 it came with still to get an OS on the blighter! When I got it it was handed to me in bits, literally, only missing the drive ribbon cable. it's been reassembled and now boots up to the no operating system found so nearly there. Anyone have a spare ribbon?

 

Instead of tacking onto an existing thread... You may want to post something in the BST forum..... WTB CF-M34 Connector Ribbon or something like that.

 

Maximum RAM on the CF-M34 700 (mk3) is 256. There is no on board RAM and the single RAM slot is limited to 256. To boot from USB CD you must have bios version V3.01L21. You will need a USB floppy to execute the bios flash but thankfully the mk3 accepts a wide variety of USB floppy drives, just make sure USB Floppy boot is enabled under the Advanced tab in bios and floppy disk is the first device selected on the Boot tab. After the bios flash select CD as the first boot device.

 

Sorry it wasn't meant as a advert for the part, I have found a caddy on eBay with the foam insert and ribbon, so all should be good.
On a different note, back to the thread is it worth creating in either here or the wikispace a table if what modules fit what models of the m34 and other toughbooks?

 

ok you can put xp pro there are 2 ways. you can take the harddrive connect it usb to another computer take a xp pro disk and run/open the i386 file copy it to the harddrive that you connected via usb remove the harddrive from the usb port put in back into the notebook. you will need a floppy drive (one by panasonic) look on ebay for one also you will need a win98se boot disk with smartdrive.exe on it(google for that) when you connected the floppy and boot up at the a: prompt you type in c:/ than ypu will see c:\ than type in i386winit setup/install. xp should start to load . or just leave the harddrive in the laptop panasonic has a usb cd rom drive that is suppose to be compatable. the floppy boot win xp on the harddrive worked for me.also make sure the drive is formatted to fat most new harddrive are fat by default.