New cf-18 owner questions

I just got a cf-18 on eBay cheap to use at work as a scan tool. It's a cf-18fdazxvm. I have installed windows xp pro and have encountered a couple issues. I am not seeing the touchpad or the wireless card in the device manager. I have tried installing touchscreen and WLAN drivers from panasonic's website and I get an error saying "machine does not support". If I have read correctly, by my model number I should have a digitizer screen and a wireless card. Am I doing something wrong or is this machine just not equipped? How do I find out for sure?

 

Double check your BIOS screen to see if the model number matches. You can use WINRAR or 7ZIP(free) to extract the drivers and make them install, but make sure they are the right one. If they are not showing up they may be disable in bios. You will have to press F2 on start up and then enter bios to change that.


Pentium M 733- 1.1GHzULV (Centrino),
10.4" Hi-bright XGA with Digitizer
, 40GB,
256MB,
Intel 802.11a+b+g,
WinXP Tablet 2005,
Dual pass through

Since you have installed windows XP Pro you will have to install the Wacom driver for it to work right.

Some reading for you.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/522553-new-wacom-driver.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/651584-panasonic-toughbook-cf-18-thread-faq.html

 

The model number matches the bios. Touchscreen is enabled in the bios. The drivers were filtered by model number and were downloaded as .exe files, shouldn't require extraction. I'll look into the Wacom driver, I left the machine at work so I'll have to try on Monday. Thanks for your input.

 

I have seen a few other people post that they had the right driver but it still wouldn't extract. You may have to manually extract it anyway. Just make sure the hardware matches. You do have the pen that has the clicker on the side? It takes a special pen for it to work after you have the driver loaded.

 

Unfortunately the machine did not include a stylus. There are two other cf-18's in the shop and I can activate the touchscreen with my finger on both. One is a cf-18D and the other is a cf-18f like mine. For some reason, the restore disks for the other mk3 wouldn't boot on my machine, so I'm on my own. I haven't had any luck finding model specific restore disks for my machine so I need to make xp pro work. I have ordered a gb of additional ram and another wireless card (I haven't verified that one is installed). For $30 total, it won't hurt to have extras. I've read that vista has digitizer drivers built in. I may try that if all else fails. Again, thanks for your response.

 

You will need a stylus, the digitizer will not respond to your finger! When you read the threads ADOR linked all will be revealed. The cheapest source for the ELECTRO MAGNETIC stylus is to find a Wacom "Penabled" stylus, MP209 maybe, I'm too lazy to look right now. Tablet XP is available, look for some Motion restore disks on eBay.
CAP

 

There are others but the motion computing restore disk is what I used on my Mk5. Most of the restore disks from other makers come in two sets OS and the drivers. You only need the OS disk. So if you have any xp tablet disks lying around the pen would work out of the box. I have the link and model to the alternate pens you can use in one of the threads I posted. There have been several people that have put xp pro on these machines with sucess. Just had to mix up the drivers they used.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/653223-cf18-mk1-cf-18bel01me-buttons-help.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/662774-digitizer-xp-pro-sp3.html

More home work tonight for you to go though. Will all of this I have posted you should be ready to tackle it Monday morning.

 

There is 2 sets of restore disks for the MK3 . One is for the touch (XP Pro) and one for the Digitizer (XP Tablet) Did you get a warning saying you were using the wrong set or it just would not boot to it...which tells me you were using a cheap china 2 line usb cd-rom...the 18"s hate them ones

 

I think it was just giving him that warning because the OS is PRO and not TABLET version.

 

Having just spent the last 12 hours surrounded by cf-18s in various stages of build, I feel your pain. I think you're correct to check first to see if a wifi card is actually installed, more often than not some Ebay sellers are extracting out all the pieces, RAM, WIFI, battery, Caddy and AC adapter, as the base units have not been bringing the money they once were, and then selling the parts on the side. Im finding that with the digitizer units, you have assume they dont come with a stylus, and add 25 to 35 dollars to your build costs. Of course since some nice forum member sent me a Ubuntu disk, I've been using that for many of my cf-18 builds. In Fact, tomarrow, five CF-18 digitizers are shipping out to el. salvador, two to the Dominican Republic, one to Honduras and one to Mexico. All are loaded with Ubuntu in spanish, full of the free educational software, a huge bonus for the kids. So if all else fails, you could always try Ubuntu, its free and auto recognizes both the wifi and digitizer screen.

 

Thank you for all your responses. I have a pretty good handle on things now. Digitizer pen is on order from amazon for $28 shipped. Driver are loaded. I was being stupid and didn't think I could extract files from an .exe file. Winrar and some time with the device manager got most everything working. Touchpad is recognized in device manager, will report back with functionality once the pen comes in. Wifi is up and running after installing a wifi card. There was no card installed in this machine. I have installed the 1gb of ram, recognized in BIOS. Performance hasn't increased much though. I have my factory Kia and aftermarket Subaru scan tool software running great. The one thing I can't get running is the screen rotation. I have the screen rotation icon in the taskbar but can't get the buttons or the auto-rotate working. I have the tablet button application and I thing the hotkeys are set up correctly. I really prefer tablet mode for work and the on screen keyboard would be very usefull. Thanks again for your help and any input on the tablet buttons would be appreciated.

 

On the buttons go back and re-read though those threads. I am thinking the guy had to use hot key from tablet drivers and the rotation driver from the pro drivers or that may be vice versa. He had to mix them up to get everything working right.

 

Motion computing M1400 RECOVERY CD SET of 2 disks GUARANTEED TO WORK! | eBay

16 bucks shipped. If this disk is like the LE1600 disks I got xp tablet edition from it will install xp tablet then you input the COA key from your machine. Two disk set, just don't use the second disk. 2 left, hurry, lol. I would of just PM'ed you but you don't have enough posts yet.

 

wrong post, sorry