Looking for the elusive cf 28 harddrive\optical drive caddies

Hi all!

I am new to this forum (my friend Cory turned me on to it). My name is Jeff, and my passion is repairing laptops. My wife and I are the proud owners of Doc's Laptops here in Missouri.

Recently we acquired 15 cf 28's, but as usual they are missing the elusive harddrive and optical drive caddies.

Actually, all I really need to put harddrives in these are the harddrive ribbons. we have had success in the past fabricating the actual harddrive enclosure.

I have found a place locally where these ribbons can be ordered new for 40.00 each, but was hoping that someone here may know where we can score a better deal than this.

We also need 15 optical drives or just the caddies.

Nice to meet you all and to be a new part of this forum.


Jeff & Nan

 

Jeff... You should look on ebay or refer to "Doc"... (If he sold you the laptops.) We are here to help the person who purchased a laptop and needs help with drivers and as well as setup and modifications... Not to provide business links to bulk purchases. I think if you use the search function, a few of your questions may be answered but I think your best bet overall will be ebay.

 

I haven't seen any sources of those ribbon cables, but you can often find hard drive enclosures appearing on Ebay.

Craig.

 

Optical drive caddies (with a drive included) are quite prolific on eBay, and they go for about $45 for a CD-ROM and $60-65 for a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo. There are several sellers even listing them in lots of five.

Hard drive caddies are much more rare. Out of respect for my fellow forum regulars, I'll refrain from providing eBay pricing information, but that information is equally available to you as it is to me and anyone else. Do the research, young padawan.

Heartland SI ( http://www.heartlandsi.com/) is also a good source, since they are an authorized distributor of Panasonic replacement parts. The caddy (for a mk2/mk3 CF28) will run about $139, plus obligatory $20 express shipping in the United States. Despite the higher prices, they're known to be a very high-quality merchant. I would imagine they'd even be economical for such a large order - you said you needed 15 caddies, or at least the ribbon cables?

You'll need to call them, as they do not list their stock online. In fact, as long as you know the model of CF-28 (mark 1, 2, or 3, or the first letter after "CF-28" in that long model number on the underside of the laptop), they'll be able to determine exactly what part number you need. They might even carry the ribbon my itself, but I've never asked them.

I've seen the ribbon cables sold by themselves on eBay, but they're even more rare. Based on my experiences with the caddy, though, I would say that it's complicated enough that you'll be much happier with a real factory-made caddy rather than something handmade. They're far more complex than a mundane business/consumer laptop's caddy, which is often just a skimpy metal box with some holes drilled in it.

Panasonic's shockmount hard drive caddies are usually rather sophisticated. Check out the CF-28 hard drive install FAQ thread for pictures on the internals of the relevant caddy, and you'll see what I mean.

This is not to discourage the do-it-yourself attitude, however - there's plenty of that here on this forum, so much so that it's one of our defining characteristics. As capt.dogfish would say - Welcome to the madhouse.

 

I do have quite a few of the cf-28 hard drive caddies up for sell, and my prices are alot better than heartland. Contact me and we can set up a deal.