CF-U1 Junkie

IT'S DONE!

Read through to see benchmarks on page 2.


OK so I have a MK1, 16gb, 1.33GHZ, 1GB RAM, blah blah blah and an MK2 with 1.6GHZ, 2GB RAM and 64gb...

I wanted to share my findings.

Both run windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 fine. It's a bit more work on the MK1, it's just slower.

The 64GB SSD is JUNK! It cannot write faster than 30mb/s and less than 1mb/s in random read/writes. The 16gb is roughly 3 times faster, about standard for IDE Hard drive. I put the 16GB SSD in the MK2 and it's a beast with windows 10.

To make up the gap in space I got a SD card on a M-PCIE card and put a 64gb SD on it. Installed that on the MK1's WWAN daughter board and popped it in the MK2, mounted my user files there in widows, has 3gb free with win10 out of 16.

Last night I tore the MK1 down and did some digging in it's guts. On the main board is a STANDARD 40 pin connector for the hard drive, this is the same ZIF connector used in Ipods and so on. I grabbed a ZIF to CF card thing I had for an Ipod and hooked it up with a 8gb SD on a CF adapter. I threw Ubuntu on that card and it booted from it easily.

So to where I am now. MK2 is getting a M-SATA to ZIF board, a 256GB M-SATA SSD and ditching the WWAN Daughter board. I gutted the old SSD Caddy and just put it back in to fill the hole.

Here's the parts:

ZIF 40 pin to M-SATA:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251744800870?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

That's it. Need a 5CM cable or so, I happened to have one.

Then whatever SSD you want to fit on that. I'll get pictures and details on how to install it soon. I thought I would just see if I could get others working on it too. There's all the space you need between the batteries where the WWAN Daughter board would sit, or sits.

3M double stick tape works wonders to attach it to the magnesium inner frame too.

Once I get it done there will be pictures and comparative HD Tune and benchmarks.

Oh yeah, I paid $175 for the MK2 with the CF-VEBU11 dock, 2D barcode and camera. I added a $70 ebay CF-19 GPS kit in it and a special driver to interface it with the sensor API in windows 8-8.1 and 10. Works awesome on my motorcycle for nav and so on.

Anyways, pictures coming when I stop being lazy. Parts to make it right will be here in a few weeks, bidding on a 256GB M-SATA for $60 right now.

 

Great job....please post the pictures. This will give the others a better idea how you did it.

 

Thanks for the info........

 

I'll get the parts for the MK1 and take some high res shots of the main board and it's connectors to show it all, I'm waiting for the adapter to get here from china to do it right, as of now I can't close it up because the CF card is too thick. There will be so many pictures National Geographic would be jealous when I get those china parts!

Oh, if anyone wants the 64GB SSD, you can have it for $10, to cover shipping to North America, hit me up if somewhere else.

Pictures!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rrfadqkg7ly0to9/AABMsswLYnnFbXDC5d_l3geFa?dl=0

All the goods are in there, here's some highlights.

100_1208 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:37 PM

That's the main board, you can see the connector right in the middle, under the wifi card. The shorter one left of it is for the WWAN daughter board.

100_1210 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:37 PM

The cables, as you can see, same size and pitch.

100_1215 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:37 PM

This is the test rig I made. Bios reads it fine, boots off the SD in there. You need to look in the dropbox, forum said the bios pic was too big.

Benchmarks!

First, 16GB SSD:

CFU1-MK2-16GB by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:57 PM

And 64GB:

CFU1-MK2-64GB by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:57 PM

There's the issue, both suck and are slow, but man that 64GB is bad.

 

Alright now let's look up the MK2's skirt.

100_1221 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:18 PM

Here it is! The insides. Top left you might notice the black felt tape over the aftermarket Ublox GPS unit. There's an old thread around here on that. It was first done in my MK1 years ago.

100_1222 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:18 PM

Close up of the GPS and antenna. Hotglue, works great!

100_1223 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:18 PM

Here's the WWAN Daughter board with the SD card mounted in it. Has a cheap 64GB SD on it. Class 10, of course.

100_1225 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:18 PM

Little bit more of a full view. This one has every option now.

100_1224 by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:18 PM

Here's the edge of the daughter board area where I will put the 256GB SSD. You can see there's a fair amount of space in every direction. The way the MPICE card lays is perfect too, the connector can slip right down like the WWan board's to hook up at the ZIF port on the main board.

Mycomputer by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 5:32 PM

And here's the free space. The 64gb card is mounted as a folder on drive C: so I can install things on it, Windows won't let you put a program on a removable disk otherwise.

 

I had some tinkering with my U1's coming soon. Even was going to speed test the factory 32Gb ssd. Only one I haven't done yet. I was hoping one of the connectors inside could be used with a adapter for more space. I was going to do testing myself when I swapped broken screen on a Mk2 I have out for one of the rougher Mk1 units I have. It sounds even better that you can do this mod to the main drive. Good Job.

And I like the pac man lid, lol.

 

Haha! Thanks, that's my old MK1.

Anyways, I won the bid on the Samsung 256GB M-SATA drive. On a Sata 3 bus it can do reads at over 500mb/s,writes about 300. I can't wait to see what it will do here.

Here it is on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/PM841-MZMTD256HAGM-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B00C72P9XM

 

Your not going to get that read or write speeds on this Toughbook but it will be faster. It will be nice to see what you do get.

 

The limit on the Mk1 CF-U1 is limited to IDE speeds, I am not sure if the Mk2 motherboard is faster or not.

 

Yeah, It's IDE on the MK2, top is 133mb/s. Thing is, it wont be a crap SSD limiting it anymore, it could run full throttle and the SSD wont care. I have a Acer netbook of similar spec to the MK2 Ultra, it gets about 80mb/s reads and 65mb/s writes on a 246gb corsair SSD.

I decided not to wait on China and reordered everything state side, maybe this weekend I can get this done.

 

At least it will be more speedy than the stock SSD.

 

Parts came! Here's an update.



And there it is.

It's a perfect fit too.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwzl3b6jgr60em0/IMAG0004.jpg?dl=0

Sorry, giving up on uploading for a minute.

Anyways, here it is on the cable:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sc8lcdxgppqhgx2/IMAG0003.jpg?dl=0

Washed out phone pictures.. my other cam ate every AA I got.

Drive in place with some 3M double stick:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjjfn48mnfdr001/100_1239.JPG?dl=0

And to help keep it there I put the shield from the old WWAN kit over it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1ub4l457cijehd/100_1240.JPG?dl=0

Proof it fits:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ewgcdd13xw3nu96/100_1241.JPG?dl=0

Disinterested Dog:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lz481wzyku78j2k/IMAG0001.jpg?dl=0

Oh, and the SD card in the WWAN socket:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5l6xtjphil153ca/IMAG0005.jpg?dl=0

Here's the folder if you want to see all pictures:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rrfadqkg7ly0to9/AABMsswLYnnFbXDC5d_l3geFa?dl=0

Installing Windows 10 now, I'll benchmark it again when done. So far, it's faster.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g0afywwrztv8bxw/IMAG0007.jpg?dl=0

And windows is loaded, Here's the benchmark!


To compare the 64GB SSD this came with:

CFU1-MK2-64GB by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:57 PM

And with the 16GB SSD:

CFU1-MK2-16GB by morganlowe posted Sep 12, 2015 at 4:57 PM

Oh I wanted to mention this too, the cable between the adapter and board is the keyboard to main board cable from the MK1, It fit perfectly.

 

Thanks for the photos.....

 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Toughbook-CF-U1-Readily-Available-SSD-Mod/

All in one place. Free for all to use and build upon. Good luck!

 

Use update. It's been great! I actually broke the connector off the board for the SSD, got another from ebay and fixed that. I was messing around copying stuff on to it with my usb adapter.

It's so fast now, I can use it like a normal PC.