CF29 shutting down without warning - overheating PCMCIA card

I suspect it was heat-related (temps were very high yesterday - mid to high 30's in C-land) but I put my PCMCIA USB card into my CF29 to use a few extra USB devices and each time the machine booted up it would go fine once I logged in but as it initialised everything it would power off without warning.

I pulled the USB card out as that was the only thing I'd changed and it was very hot so I think it caused the system to shut down due to a high-temp alarm of some sort.

Once the card was out it worked fine again. The card does work but because the PCMCIA slots have little or no airflow and no forced cooling, cards don't have any way to 'sink away' heat.

Anyone had this type of thing before?

Craig.

 

had the same issue in my cf-28. it didnt shut down though, just came bloody close to burning my fingers. no issues with the same card in my cf-29. even when my heat pads were rubbish and i was pushing 100 degrees Celsius.

 

Yup. You'll be lucky if you didn't burn out the power supply to your PCMCIA slot; the AKE shorty USB cards will do that when they fail. Hopefully you didn't have it plugged in long enough to do permanent damage.

The problem with these cards is this; the PCMCIA slot can provide 3.3V at 400ma to any card plugged into it (This is part of the JEDEC standard for PCMCIA). The USB ports need to put out 5V for many USB powered devices to function properly, so they have an inverter circuit (or DC-DC converter) to kick the voltage up. This would be fine, except for the fact that the JEDEC (Or is it IEEC? I can't remember) standard for USB is 5V/500ma per port. Now I know that it comes with a power dongle cord so you can plug into another USB port for additional current; but that's STILL not enough.

Remember the 3.3V/400ma limit of the slot... well, that includes the current to run the card itself, as well as anything plugged into it. Your card TRIES to feed that current load; but since it has poor (or none, probably) current limiting circuitry, some of that load gets transferred through the controller chip itself and PLOOP! dead card.

It's happened to me with at least two of the 6 cards I have; 2 others were DOA, started to heat up like a coffee warmer with nothing ever plugged into them. Another failed while I was learning these limitations and may either have failed due to initial suckage or due to my unwitting abuse. I have 1 left that still works; I only use it for meeses or Flash drives.

mnem
Short card? Short-lived.

 

Yup..I've been down that road too. Made me nuts for a while trying to figure why my usb devices would not work. Never overheated a card though.

 

This is the info that need to know specially for those who bought and planning to buy a toughbook with PCMCIA card either with bluetooth or usb port or either with both of them.

As mnementh pointed out with you guys. It will not last long and it may cost damage not only on the controller but to the whole system. Its a $1,000 waste for a few foolish guys on ebay when they've seen this highway of knock offs item on a toughbook.

If you really want to use a PCMIA bluetooth, I'll recomend the billionton which has the voltage consumption base on PCMCIA of only 3.3vdc. Those PCMCIA card from china is never been on standard. What they care about is just to sell it and they don't care If it coz damage or not on your system.


ohlip

 

I have ordered one of these ake cards,I hope it will not overheat..I plan to use it only with low-power usb 2.0 devices like pen drives.
It's available an usb pcmcia card by Billionton too, it's the CBU2N-B but I don't know if it would fit in the cf28 with closed doors.

 

I know that the AKE cards are crap... And they do heat up (As do a lot of PCMCIA cards!) but to have the laptop shut down right after boot-up seems extreme.

Has the bottom plate ever been off? Was it put back correctly? Were the heat pads in okay shape?

 

I thought it was strange too - the machine booted up normally and I could log into my Xp user space just fine, but after about 30 seconds as everything set itself up, the machine just powered off with no warning. The ambient temp was well over 30 C so that wouldn't have been helping. I've never had the bottom of the machine apart for modding.

The only thing I'd done was plug in the USB card to run a USB camera (my Logitech webcam device). I am aware of the 5v 500 mA limit but I didn't know the PCMCIA standard specified a 3.3 v 400 mA limit.

I'd be curious to understand what actually triggered the system to power-off like it did. With the card out, it's worked fine since. I might look at getting a different USB card. The AKE ones are what I've been using up to now. I've known they run hot since I got one some time back when all I had was a CF28 system.

Craig.

PS. Re bluetooth, I do have a Billionton bluetooth PCMCIA card which I use regularly and it's just fine.

 

I've seen bad hardware lockup a machine or shut it down before. Once in a while a problematic driver will do it also.
You may want to replace the thermo pads on the cpu. The thermo pads may be weak and any other strain on the system shuts it down. It may be a bios executed shutdown.

 

Hallo,
I'm short of USB slots.
So, may I understand to use only Type1 PCMCIA cards on CF29 MK3?
Because, there are on the market and Tipe2 cards at 5V.
What type is the MK3 slot ?

 

As Deregter mention above. Go for USB PCMCIA billionton not the $7.00 AKE card from china. Type 2 Btw.

ohlip

 

First day this year of very high temps (was about 36 C outside) and the CF29 shut down without warning yesterday afternoon. It had no PCMCIA cards fitted, and I'd just done a Windows patch install and rebooted less than 5 mins before. Without a way to trace what happens I can only assume it's part of the automatic safety setup designed to stop the machine when something goes really pear-shaped, most likely the CPU reaching it's temp limit, or something like that.

I left it shut down until about 5 pm when the temps had started to fall and air inside was getting cooler. System came up fine, and I'm using it now to type this post.

Craig.

 

Craig,

It sounds to me like, as you say, the CPU is shutting down due to overheating. If it was mine, I would take it apart and put a new thermal pad, or quality paste, on the CPU and heatsink.

Morgan

 

You need new thermal pads as Morgan says. I will sometimes add a small dab of silver ceramic paste to the tops of the thermal pads to help out. I have never had any heat problems with any of my Toughbooks. As a matter of fact... I have let my Toughbook sit in my car, baking in the sun and then pull it out to fire it up... No sweat. Then I look at my DroidX cell phone and notice that the heat of the car shut it down to protect it.

When you reinstall the bottom plate... You should use your fingernail or a dental pick to gently push the sides of the thermal pad back together where you have seen it is squished out. This raises the height back up to make contact with the CPU. If the thermal pad is too brittle to allow this... Then you need to replace it.