Finally got my toughbook!

Well, I was running late for work today, and right as I was getting into my car, I saw the UPS truck pull onto my street. Sure enough, he stopped in front of my house, and one "Careful, it's heavy" later, I had my toughbook! Tore it open on the way in, and started playing with it as soon as I got to work. Here's what I know so far.

CF28SWJG8DM

CF28
Pentium III 1GHz
13.3 XGA Touchscreen with backlit rubber keyboard
30GB HDD and 256MB RAM
Floppy, Modem, Ethernet
Wireless LAN, 802.11b Wireless LAN Cisco
Wink2K


Now, after getting it started, that's all correct except the RAM. On boot it says there's 512MB of RAM. I opened the case up, and there's a Panasonic branded 256MB PC133 stick in the RAM slot. Now, as I understand, that means I have 256MB onboard, which meshes with the order number. If I interpret that correctly, then my maximum RAM is 512MB, correct?

Also... I'm having a DEVIL of a time trying to calibrate the touchscreen, has anyone else run into this issue? I can't get it to recognize my finger presses when I calibrate, even if I use a pencil eraser or something similar.



Man, I've only had this computer for a few hours, and I already love it. Can't wait to start upgrading/modifying.

 

Thats a nice one, even has the wi-fi
512MB add-on ram will total it out at 768MB if you want

Alex

 

I'll swap you for my CF-27 if you like.

(Note the green writing, lol)

 

Well, running into my first snag. I want to put windows XP on it because I don't really care for 2K... But I can't get it to recognize my USB-IDE adapter, and I can't figure out how to boot from USB. Any ideas?


Also: This computer is aggressive. I had it at a friend's house yesterday and it attacked his Compaq laptop. Was sitting on a chair, out of nowhere it slid off and landed on his power supply, broke the plastic and shorted out the 120VAC side of the box, I now have electrical burns on my case and he has a dead laptop. Anyone else have a problem with their toughbook attacking other, lesser notebooks?

 

Yep dropped an 18 on a MBP 15" and totaled the screen assembly and even broke its touchpad. and had a 29 land on an old HP dv1000 in a rubbermaid tote and pretty much turned it into chunks ( -30C out that day )

 

Holy cow! I was kidding when I asked, now I'm scared to leave it in a room with my Toshibas...

 

LOL, well your not like me and used to all the toughbooks .. and I am well known for tossing them in cars, bins or in a corner.

just keep the toshibas higher or a foot or 2 away

 

oh! com...on guys, get out of here.


ohlip

 

Heh, the toughbook will have to have a kennel away from the 'soft' laptops.

Any protips on booting from USB? I've been reading about bootable floppies, but all I'm succeding in doing is confusing myself.

 

You should be able to make a bootable floppy from any XP install I believe. I did a google search for "install xp pro usb" and the second hit seems to be a good bet. It talks about installing XP Pro from a usb flash drive and has links to a forum that has a how to guide. Good luck and let us know how it goes

 

Yessir! I just found my project for the night.

 

"Last edited by Tomcat57 : Yesterday at 08:27 PM. Reason: Spelling " Alex - you would do that!! LOL, you should edit his user name since he clearly misspelled "the" LOL

 

I have spell-check on my word software that I use
It just looks a bit more refined if the spelling is correct in posts
Some of the shorter words (3 and 4 letter) are where people forget to check the spelling at times


Alex

 

Anit hath hte truth?

 

Hmm. Every how-to I'm finding involves the computer being bootable from USB, which, so far as I can tell, mine isn't.

 

Omg, such old specs...what do you need a toughbook for anyway? Do you browse the web while skydiving or something?

 

You could get a CD drive that fits in the media pocket and boot from that ... They can be pricey on eBay but saw some recently for ~$25 plus shipping. Or try the WTB (want to *Borrow*) section.

 

Useless post is useless. If I didn't need a toughbook I wouldn't have bought it. Thanks for your time.

Yeah, I already ebay'd one. I just want to keep working on it while I'm waiting for the drive to show up.

 

Yes sir, I put XP on my old CF-M34 with no CD, the Yestertech way the old school way! With a LapLink cable I copied all of the executibles over there and installed from the HDD!

You could also install Bart's PE and then install from an attached Flash drive or CD ROM, or again, by coping over the install CD.

Good Luck!

 

@ husky, I'm just wondering what people use it for.

 

You should Google it.... You'll get more info. If you are serious.... These are rugged laptops that the military use along with police & fire departments.... If you go to Panasonic.com and search for Toughbook... You will see how they are made and why.

 

I took a look at the site, they mention things like its resistance against freezing, or falling from up to 90 cm. Still not sure whay they are for, I doubt the army's officers are going to type something in the freezcold, instead of just staying in their nice headquarters. If I use my imagination maybe its for guiding miscle rockets and fire-carpet bombs while in the middle of combat?

 

The link in your signature line is all about laptop reliability

I doubt that you are passionate about the reliability enough to justify the $4,000 price tag on a new CF-30 toughbook

Panasonic sales of these rugged notebooks is not large enough so they are not even included in the surveys, but if they were included the would be at the top of the list for reliability

These are special use laptops though ,they have features like a bright outdoor use 1000 nit touchscreen , and lack performance Video cards that you would expect in a modern laptop


Alex

 

Wow, that is expensive...That screen for outdoor use definitly sounds great.
About panasonic as a brand, I'm aware of their superb quality in everything they make. My next hd tv is definitly going to be panasonic and not sony.

 

@Antwerp
My mistake. The tone of your post sounded like you were ridiculing, not going after information, please accept my apologies.

As far as military use, it's not just officers. I have several friends who are enlisted men in the United States Marine Corps, and as enlisted men, they use toughbooks in their day-to-day activities. One does forward artillery something something, and the others have significantly less interesting jobs, weapons training etc.

As far as why I have mine, well, I'm hard on my equipment. I do a lot of field support and other work outdoors, and I'd rather be able to take my laptop with me instead of having to go back to the car every time I want to do something on it. As far as non-field-work goes, I'm a diehard Toshiba guy.

 

I have mine for working outdoors or in remote locations. Freeze them, use them in the rain, knock them off of the roof of a service van ... theyre the only ones that hold up.

as for reliability consumer grade latops seem to be GOOD if they have a 3 year failure rate of 17%, I think to buiness classes are happy at 12% on a good day. these full rugged units are UNDER 4%

http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/why-toughbook-failure-rates.asp

 

Sorry! but the guy never really know what is panasonic toughbook its all about coz he know only the comer..lize laptop. Now is the time to educate him.


ohlip

 

You meant to say "wean him off commercialized laptops and welcome one more toughbook addict!!!"... right?

 

You know... Google and YouTube are there for a reason... If you do not understand after several explanations.. Or poking around this forum... You need to do a little more research....

Yes... Army Officers DO type in the freezing cold.. They also type in the blazing heat.... And while under fire... So do law enforcement agencies and first responders.

One of your posts here has already been deleted by a mod from a different section as he felt you were being a TROLL... I don't like titling people and I don't like deleting posts.... But you are on the edge.

 

Hey, can I put the OEM GPS from a CF-29 in my 28?

 

I suppose you could if you are fairly handy and have all the pinouts... But I don't think the antenna from the CF-29 is tuned for the CF-28. If you have OEM GPS for a CF-29... You should just buy a CF-29 IMHO.

You would either need the OEM kit from the CF-28 to use for the OEM 29 kit as they don't install the same way.

 

Just picked up a 20 channel kit sans antenna from ohlip, big thanks to Tomcat for spotting and messaging it to me, and a (future) big thanks to ohlip for a good GPS. I'm reading up on antennaes now.

 

Aha! so, you are the guy who made my item diss...per on ebay. Anyway, I have a couple of active patch antena with 6 inches long pigtail that I usually use for testing everytime I modded a unit with gps and for you to start with, I mean to test the system. I will include one of those. It is not good lookin but it works on me. You can use it temporarily or permanently but you need a bump out casing for this.


ohlip

 

Thank you very much! Wow, I've only had my toughbook for a few days, and I'm already starting to think you guys rival the BMW community for support and general coolness.

ohlip, I'm looking to eventually get a patch antenna that I can mount entirely inside of the compute so there's no outward sign that it has GPS. Any suggestions?

 

Teh... you may use this: http://secure.conwin.com/cgi-bin/st...0.56&act=&aff=&pg=prod&ref=53671&cat=&catstr= and hide on a plastic side of the unit.


ohlip

 

Mine is under the plastic Toughbook logo on the cover - works very well, though you need to take the screen apart to install it.

 

Alright, got the GPS installed, and the antennae. ohlip, where can I find the drivers to use with this unit?

 

Sam.. sorry, man! just been from work. Ok! there is no need for a driver. First you may go into the bios and enable/auto the gps, then save and exit. But first go to the device manager and see what is the com port is present. After saving and exit as mentioned above go to device manager and look for a new com port but mostly it appear as com port 3. There is a posibility that your mouse may go eraticly as the windows sees it as a ball mouse and if it happen go to device manger again under mouse disable the serial ball mouse.

Then download the navigator or gps viewer or others, its your choice from the web just google it. Its free. when its done and installed the gps viewer, assign the new com port that appear on device manager for gps and your good to go.

For road navigation there is a lot of software out there like streets and trips.

ohlip

 

If you get Streets and Trips, you do not need another program for the GPS as it has its own GPS setup. If you try to run both, it will f@#$ up the S&T program and it will not see the GPS unit.

 

Correct Silver Trooper
One program accessing the com port at a time
Unless you use a software program that is designed to share the com port

 

If you guys want to use your gps for multiple application you may use gps gate, xport and etc.


ohlip

 

Downloading Streets and Trips right now, going to give that a try.

 

You cut a hole out of the magnesium cover and mounted your GPS antenna there?

 

Ok, so which filters should I use?

 

Sam...You must have an antena casing like on the attached photo. From time to time it show up on ebay but for the meantime you may try to install it on the side plastic of the unit vertically facing the top suface outward but to make sure no metal from the unit touches the antena. It doesn't give you much signal but I guess it will when you are outside.


ohlip

 

Thanks!
So, which part of the antenna should be facing out?