Getting started with a CF-28

First off, let me say that this is a great site: more than I ever hoped to find for "older" hardware. I found you guys while doing some research after buying a surplus CF-28 from my employer for $25. (Employee deal only- sorry!) I have a CF-28STJG8KM that I had some ideas for upgrading, and after my reading here I have a whole lot more ideas. (Unless of course I can talk my boss out of one of the CF-29s we still have that she won't let go of yet. )

The short list: add 512MB memory, upgrade hard drive, toss the internal mini-PCI modem card for updated wi-fi (keeping the LAN card though), add bluetooth, swap keyboard to rubber model, change CD-ROM for DVD, and finally add internal GPS or at least a bluetooth external GPS. I have a few quick questions most likely to be followed up by many more later.

I have seen mention of using the internal PCMCIA slot (currently filled by the Cisco wi-fi card) for bluetooth. I know these cards are hard to find, but that would be my first choice unless I get some better suggestions. Can anyone point me to some models that are known to work? I would like to avoid using the external PCMCIA slots as I have already purchased a smart card reader for one slot and would like to leave the second free for a memory card reader for my camera. And if I do move the bluetooth external, I need for the door to be able to close with the card inside. I had considered one of the mini USB dongles, but once again I need the port covers to close completely with it in place and still get a decent signal.

For the wi-fi, I plan on getting one of the recommended Atheros based cards. This laptop already has wi-fi, but I want to upgrade primarily so I can use WPA rather than downgrade my network's security to WEP. The question I have relates to the antennae. I would like to maintain the stock whip antennae, if it will work. Most of the information here is for models that did not have wi-fi at all to start with, let alone the optional whip. I am wondering if the antennae will even work and if so how to go about routing the wiring from the internal PCMCIA to the new location of the mini-PCI slot. If the stock whip will not work, I would at least like to make the new antennae as unobtrusive as possible.

The next question is easier. I want to bump the hard drive capacity as high as I can. 160GB seems to be as high as I have seen. I am assuming that is because of a BIOS limitation? If memory serves, there was a limitation pretty commonly around 130GB, so is part of that 160 wasted?

Last question for now. I would like to add the back lit rubber keyboard and I understand that you need to have the inverter for the back lit part to work. Is there a way to add the inverter (1st choice) or just leave the keyboard unlit (last resort). I have seen the keyboards on Ebay, but have not found any of the inverters. I recently saw a keyboard that only had two cables and claimed to work on all models and now I am really curious.

Perhaps a bit of background would be helpful. This laptop was purchased to go with me during my deployment to Iraq with my National Guard unit. Thus the need for the sealed keyboard and reluctance to use external devices, antennas, or PCMCIA cards that will not allow me to close the covers. This will literally be in and out of my rucksack and I want to maintain the pretty streamlined stock exterior as much as possible so things don't get broken off. Even when I return home, I intend to take this thing with me on drill weekends.....in Oregon.....where it rains.....a LOT. I want to use this thing like it was designed for and not worry too much about keeping it covered because of open ports. I have a pedestrian model Dell laptop for the other "normal" uses. I bought his one to get wet, dirty, and occasionally bumped around a bit. So any other suggestions for field usability would also be welcomed.

OK, this post is long enough for now, hopefully not too long. Thanks in advance for any guidance you all can bestow on me.

 

Wyrm,
Welcome to the forum.
For a hard drive the Samsung 160gb, single platter, ATA drive is a good, cheap solution.
The backlit rubber keyboard does not require an inverter, that's for one model only emissive keyboard.
I don't know if the internal wlan card cable will match up to the atheros card, but you should be able to get it to reach.
The existing whip should work for wifi if that's what it was for originally.
The Billionton bluetooth cards you find on eBay will fit in the hidden pcmcia slot with a little surgery. The one with the external antenna is a slightly easier fit.
Make sure you get your 512mb card from Kingston, I know it will work.
That should keep you busy for a while, do some reading when you have a chance, all of these subjects have been covered in depth here.
CAP

 

Cap covered most things....
I will add that the bios might only see only 137gb of the hard drive but windows xp will see and use the full size of the hard drive.
The 160gb pata hard drive that works great is a
Samsung SpinPoint M HM160HC



Alex

 

Wyrm.... Welcome to the forum... Always glad to help someone down the slippery slope of modding!

For the BT... You want Billionton P/N GCBBTCR41R-BT. It has a little foldable antenna that swivels on the side. You will have to notch the inside of the port cover to have it fit though... You'll see when you get it. It is VERY easy to do with a Dremel tool (10 seconds) or with an x-acto knife (1 minute)... The cool thing that is NOT in the manual... Fn+Tab turns it on and off! (This trick doesn't work on the CF-29 as it has not internal PCMCIA slot!)

The Atheros based cards are the best for wifi. Get a decent one though... Don't get the $15 ones... They stink! Splurge the $50 and get an Engenous model... 600mW of pure power!

The antenna systems are numerous! I usually go with a "paddle" type mount. These are the thin foil types that normally come two to a set. Split the harness and use ONE! It can be folded 90 degrees about 20% down and stuck up on the outside of the frame but inside the cover of the opposite side of the hidden PCMCIA cover! I normally unsolder the lead, trim it to length and resolder it. Then you can either use your whip antenna if you want to mod it or shoot an SMA bulkhead out the side to connect to a cantenna or mag-mount wifi antenna. (More options) I think my paddle type antennas blow away any whip antenna that I have heard of or have tried myself. If you MUST stick with the whip... Search for mnementh's thread or post on how to mod it. He has pics and all. You basically unsolder some SMD capacitors and resistors and then it works MUCH better...

You have a 1Ghz model. Max it out with 512 RAM and look for a 7200 rpm, 100GB Hitachi drive on ebay... If you can't find one within your budget... Get the 5400 RPM 160GB drive. (Much less!)

The rubber keyboards don't require anything other than just plugging them in. If you want the hard, illuminated keyboard... Then you will need the little PC board that goes into the bottom as well as the 3 connectors that go with it! The rubber keyboards are harder to type on but you do get used to it. If you DO swap out the keyboard... Be VERY CAREFUL of the brown lever on the larger ribbon cable. There are two type of connectors there... One has little pinchers from the side. (Smaller cable) the other has the brown lever that forces the ribbon cable up and into the connector. About 10% of anyone who swaps out a keyboard on a CF-28 breaks the brown lever to some degree. Some can be saved with a little work. If it is broken bad you will need a new mobo!

Hope this helps!

Rick

 

Thanks for the responses. I think I feel safe buying the keyboard now between Cap and Toughbook and am watching Ebay for a decent one. Thanks for the heads up on the connectors, but I have already dealt with that at work. Everyone else is chicken after one of our senior techs broke one, so they make the new guy do it....ME! Unfortunately, I have not had any experience modding these babies, mostly just simple repairs.

I had already spotted the memory recommendations and will add that once I have some of the other mods done and paid for. For now, I am making do with a scrounged 256 MB module. (free is a great price)

Tomcat, that is good news on the hard drive. Sounds like Microsoft finally got something right. I was aware of the BIOS limitations, but I have never personally had to deal with it as I usually upgrade too frequently for it to be an issue. I really want as large of a drive as I can support as I plan on loading lots of multimedia to take with me, so the bigger the better. 160 GB is safe, has anyone had any luck with anything larger?

Toughbook, thanks for all the input on the antennae. I missed the post about using the factory antennae and I will look for that now. I hear you that the aftermarket antennas are the best signal wise, but I don't know if that is the best overall solution for me just yet. I want good range, but I don't usually push it at home. Out in the field may be another matter. I am strongly considering the better card if my budget allows and see if that works well enough with the factory whip. I am mainly hung up on the existing whip because it is retractable and doesn't have to be disassembled to store it in my rucksack. I am hoping to keep the separate peripherals down to a minimum as I will be totally hosed if something gets lost. Not too easy to find replacements over in the sandbox. But if it does not work like I want, then I may have to rethink it.

 

I too have been looking at replacing the stock white kbd on my CF28 (phew now I have sorted out the GPS hardware device driver conflicts!) with a backlit rubberised one. Just need to find a new one as I'd rather start out with something that I know is as-manufactured rather than a used one.

I'm looking at drives too - I like the Hitachi Endurastar range as they're made for this sort of application, but the really rugged version (the 'j' type) is only made up to 30 GB capacity. I think the less-rugged 'n' type exists in bigger capacities.

How are you going for batteries? The battery in my 28 is pretty much hosed but I run the system on AC power all the time at present. Being a military person you'd probably get access the special field power sources which us civilian types don't but I have purchased a Lind power supply unit for when I take the 28 out for a drive in my car. It'll be going with me to Sydney in April for a 1500 km drive there and the same back to Adelaide a few weeks later.

Craig.

 

The main problem with hard drives that you are going to encounter is you must stay with pata ,ata ,ide drives
Not the sata drives, common for laptops now
The Samsung drive that I recommend is a very good upgrade
I upgraded a cf-28 mk-2 hard drive for a customer, to the Samsung drive and boot times were cut in half

The rubberized keyboard is an excellent upgrade
If you find a 2 connecter unit originally designed for the cf-27, is compatible for sure


Alex

 

A couple of notes.
1. I suggest trying the whip if you want it. All of the shenanagins with the whip discussed here in the past were for the old cellular antennas which were tuned for frequencies way different from those used for wlan. Yours is tuned for wlan frequencies. I would also add one paddle antenna as Rick suggested.
2. The Toughbook caddy provides the protection for the hard drive and I am not aware of any need for a special shock proof hard drive.
3. What Alex said about the Samsung Spin Point. For my $2/100 you don't get that much more speed out of the now obscenely overpriced 7400rpm drives.
4. For a new battery, look for Bill from upstate New York on eBay. He has new green tab Cf-28 batteries and media bay batteries. I have had very good luck with his stuff. After you buy one, you can email him and he will deal. One of the good ones!
5. The Cf-27 rubberized keyboards will fit but the cables seem to be a little shorter so you will have to be extra careful with that piece of s*** connector.
Start bidding!
CAP

 

DUH... I guess if I would have paid attention to the model number I would have seen that you have a LAN whip antenna and not the usual WWAN antenna.

As far as the connectors on the keyboard go... Cap brings up a valid point. Some are short and you'll find that sometimes after you connect it and then button everything up that the ribbon cable pulls out just enough to lose the functionality of some or all of your keyboard. I usually stop this by sticking a piece of packing tape over the ribbon cable and connector. This holds it in place while you put everything together.

 

If you're looking for more capacity out of the Hard Disk, I have a WD 250GB drive working fine in my 28. I have it configured for dual boot with XP and Linux, so my largest partition is about 160GB, but all the space is usable

nine

 

Currently, 250 GB is the biggest I can find in IDE, so yes that is what I was looking at. Glad to hear it works.

I wish that they still made the 7200 RPM drives, but I can sacrifice the little bit of speed for capacity and cost.

 

If you partition the hard drive and put xp on the first partition you will have good performance
The first part of the drive always reads faster
The samsung hc drive that I recomended has 1 platter and with windows on the first 50gb and 100gb on the second partition after formatting makes it as fast as my 7200rpm hitachi's
I have 2 cf-29s with 7200rpm hitachi's and 2 cf-29s with the samsung drive and I consider the boot-up time and general useage equal


Alex

 

Alex, would this be true regardless of OS? I prefer to use Win2kPro SP4 on my 28 mk3 as it lighter on resources and is faster than XP due to the total 512mb RAM (have not upgraded that yet).

From the gravevine somewhere, I've read that running a partitioned HDD shortens the lifespan. Urban myth, no?
Regards,
Ron

 

Ron

My home computer of 8 years ago had 4 7200 rpm 30gb drives that I had in a striped raid array

They were fast, but times change and 5 years ago I upgraded to a 10,000 rpm 36gb wd raptor drive
A year or so after the drive came out, some of the mainstream high capacity 7200rpm drives were surpassing it in throughput
Access time on the raptor is still better, but not by a lot
When Alienware came out with a Hitachi 7200 rpm drive years ago on their gaming laptops I just had to get one too
I updated the 5400 drive in my cf-29 to the 7200rpm drive and had a noticable performance increase
Now the single platter 5400rpm Samsung 160gb drives seem equal to the Hitachi 7200 drive

The reason for this is mainly platter density
The head has a shorter distance to travel to get or write data
And you should end up with a more reliable drive as there is only 2 heads not 4

I think Rob (JB007Rules) mentioned a while ago he was getting the newest largest capacity 10.000rpm raptor for a new home system
He commented that there was no comparison between the older raptor and the newest model as the newer model is far superior

The next big performance boost is from Solid State Drives
The cheaper models are problematic , especially with Vista but the top models outperform any standard hard drive on the market

Oh I guess I will answer your question

Partitioning and putting the o/s on the first partition is the perfect way to keep the system as fast as possible
There is no problem with excessive wear ,and there is a benefit if you ever have to reinstall the o/s of being able to keep your data intact on the second partition

Many laptops have come factory loaded for years with 2 or more partitions




Alex

 

Ya, it musta been a CF-27 backlit rubber in nice condition I got a while back. Installed (had to hold the keyboard at an angle inwards while setting the cover screws), worked fine. Had to get into the computer again and after the keyboard install it would not boot. Took apart and the front ribbon connectors had torn on the leading edge. Too short is right. I wonder if some tape over the leading edge of the ribbon would have helped, yet not impacted function. Was in nice shape too.

bg

 

Greg,
I've put several in and never cut the cable, but that's why I posted the warning. There's no way to know which one you're getting on eBay, I doubt if the sellers know most of the time.
CAP