New to toughbook

So I made the move and got a toughbook.

Its a CF-29. I don’t know the model numbers yet. It is in the mail and I should have it by Fri.

From what I know this is used, Has no charger, no hard drive.

Should use IDE or SATA??

Vista or XP???

Hard Drive or SSD drive??

I am new to all this and can’t wait to get this all going.

Any help or tips you can give will be great.

Like is there any way to make boot up go fast by using a program.

And one thing I am going to try to do is integrate a built in Fingerprint reader.

Thanks for the Help.

 

as long as it has the hard drive caddy you should be fine, if no caddy you will be hunting hard for one.. its an IDE drive but f your creative you can mod a SATA and adaptor in there

XP or win 7 both work great but by default it was setup to run win XP

I prefer SSD, but as I said before you need to mod an IDE to SATA adaptor in there.

 

How about running Vista Ultimate? And should I run 32 Bit or 64 Bit?

What kind of conector is on the other end of the Hard Drive. One side is IDE and the other is???

Has any on ever tryed to remake that cable into SATA or used one from a newer Toughbook that uses SATA?

 

ultimate will work but I tend to shy away from it.

there is a propriatory connector on the motherboard which goes to a ribbon cable in the hard drive caddy unit and you can use an adaptor inside the caddy for a SATA drive with a little work.

 

OK and was $135 a good price for it? I want to know if it got a good deal.

 

I would say yes. but it has been along time since I bought a 29 with missing drives.

 

You wouldn't happen to know if your Toughbook was all black or not? Caddys are not hard to find, they are just hard to find for under $140. I held out on my 2nd one till a $75 one surfaced as a buy it now.

 

as far as i know from the photos hoping there the right photos. It is not all black,

but I would like one all black... Its to bad I dint have more money I saw a CF-30 sell for about $600.00.

I sold an HP DV6500 so I could buy this. I there are often lots of ToughBooks for cheap on the site i got mine. But all used and most older one.

 

Do the CF-29 and 30, 31 have the same end that conects to the mother board?

 

As it was missing parts , it's not the best deal around
But the same story with a $600 CF-30 , it would be missing parts at that price

Anyways , read the stickys , we have a CF-29 FAQ guide
If I have guessed corectly you are getting a MK-2 , so XP 32bit will be the choice for a O/S

Confirm the missing parts for me

 

The only thing missing is the Hard Drive.

But lost of time it says that and just means they wiped it.
Thats how my last laptop from them was.


Processor: Intel Pentium M
CPU Speed: 1.20 GHZ
Hard Drive: None
RAM: 512MB
Drives: CD
Battery: Yes

Power Adapter: None

And what would make you think I was missing all those parst? And that is a MK-2?

 

I looked at completed listings on ebay and when I found $135 it came up
Wrong listing I guess , there are lots

Anyway
You may only be missing a few required items then
And you have a deal as the cd drive is worth $65 just by itself

You may need a hard drive caddy , you will see when you get it
That would set you back $100 for used
AC adapter $12 for a IBM compatable type
Hard drive $50 for a new samsung
It's a MK-1 and it runs best on XP
Your ram will be OK , 512mb works well with xp

 

I am thinking of going SSD and I also will be trying to mod the Hard drive conector. So i dont need an IDE to SATA adaptor.

And at some point I will be trying to add a fingerprint reader.

The site that I got this from is good. They have about 4 more up for auction and I have seen them go for under $95. I just did not have the extra cash at the time.

I have seen 15 or them up at one time.

I got a new charger for it. Its on its way.

 

you will need an adaptor. IDE and SATA are more then different pinouts they are completly different interfaces entirely, and go as far as the chipset, controllers and BIOS on the motherboard

 

Sorry, there is zero point in running a 64 bit OS on a computer with as little RAM as the CF-29.

 

W7 ultimate 86 and fatter uglier sister Vista ultimate 86 is epic enough. I didn't instal any new programs on vista and in less than a week it got bent out of shape after updates alone. 7 is starting to get that way too but it took months to get there. One of my desktops is Vista 64 with C2D 4GB ram and it takes about 7 minutes to get to the sign in screen.

 

Mickeysoft has been guilty of "code bloat" for decades, and it's only getting worse with each new iteration of "WindSlows."

 

I contemplated that myself, although I have no need for one. I do have an APC usb fingerprint reader. I bought it on closeout at Wally world for like 5 bucks a few years back. I was looking at it and thought about using an internal usb port. I was then figuring on disassembling the print reader housing and trying to fit the sensor in the dummy WWAN port cover on the left of the palm rest. That would make a clean installation that was reversible if I wanted to remove it at a later date.

 

Or:

PCMCIA Card Fingerprint Reader

 

I know I'm late to the party, but after doing a bit of reading and researching, it appears that you will get a slightly better battery life running XP over Vista/ 7. This is primarily the reason why I chose to re-install XP over Vista on my CF-19.

Sure the Vista eye candy is great, but my needs require an endurance horse, not a prancy one! YMMV.

 

@ brewmeister
Xp runs faster, so you might be correct on the battery drain
All the eye candy will use resources , but there are some features in Vista/W7 like the auto screen dimming that help
After running Vista on my Cf-19 , and later W7 ,I like the eye candy though

 

i know im late but as i tryed to do a sata mod but i did not wont to rip the hdd pad's out to make it fit as this cf-29 rides in a rig in the jump seat unless it is ssd and hapy burthday jarheads that may read this i will see you in the bars to night be on the look out for one that go's by R.E.D

 

I stuck w/xp and turned all the resource hogging stuff off. (it kinda looks like 98 once you do that). It's running rather nicely and would not go w/any newer OS from MS given your machine specs. I think I'll end up going to a sata hdd over time since these have a much better $/gb ratio. Anyone got a link to getting a sata in there?

 

2.5" SATA Hard Drive to IDE 44 Pin Adapter For Laptop Drives via link below
http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...ic-cf-29-toughbook-thread-44.html#post5868558

 

I just did a search on eBay using 'SATA to 44' as the search criteria and right off I found the same style adapter for $7.35 free shipping. You may have to wait for 2-3 weeks to get it, but at that price? I'm thinking about it for my 51!!

I'm adding the link (deleted) The adapter was shown as the 'bad' series in the SSD thread.

 

yup found same adapter too...thinking of ordering too.

 

We have a thread that we started on the adapters here
I was curious on their performance
http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...using-ide-sata-adapter-vs-samsunghm160hc.html

When you get that adapter if you want you can post in the testing thread and we can see if it can better Blair's adapter

 

Just a piece of an advice: For those who are planning to install this adpter without redesigning this adpter. I will say if you gonna pamper your toughbook like tosh..itba, stinkpad, dull, sorry(i mean sony) and the others then I say, go ahead and do it but if you are a kind of people who are on the go and sometimes bump or hit the toughbook slightly on the table or anything. I say don't do it coz it will not take vibration and impact. Why coz you loose your shock absortion component on the caddy and it almost metal to metal in contact on the caddy and worst of it is the pressure for both the adpter and the harddrive itself. The only advantage of doing this is you've got a bigger hdd capacity but for me why bother while I will loose my data anyway sooner or later. As I said maybe money is not a problem to you to buy another hdd caddy and harddrive. Ask me how I know it and also let me tell you an story about it. One new guy on ebay bought a toughbook with this kind of setup. Ask me what happened? Only on transit it all "kapot" and when he power it, it gives a BSOD. While he is asking for a refund to the seller, he bought one from me and then he is morethan happy ever after, Lol. Also one thing I have notice to those seller of customised panasonic toughbook on ebay. They are negotiating with their feedback. One time you see they have negative feedback and then a couple days later its gone. I have never do that it is not negotiable. If you earned a negative feedback and so be it. Thats the true feedback. If you made a mistake you "must" I say must be corrected but not to negotiate a feedbak. There is a proper section to answer a feedback(negative or positive) so that others can read what really happen



ohlip

 

Thanks Teo

I mentioned on the first post on the testing thread that neither Rick, you or me use this setup
The performance drop, if we use Blair's adapter for reference was a surprise

So what is left is a cost savings ,or a capacity issue as the samsung is a 160GB drive
I don't care about a few dollars
You can use an external hard drive if by chance you fill up the hard drive

 

Has any one used a 1.8 SSD OR HDD with the sata adapter? Making room for pading. And if you do use an SSD do can you leave the heater off?

 

There was some issues as mentioned on the link on the first post in the other thread with ssd's not working
To answer your question on heaters with ssd's , yes you need the heater as the specs for operating ssd drives ,although they can run at lower temps than normal drives ,do not like to run in very cold temps

There are a least 2 members here that have a 2.5" ide ssd drives installed
Both state that they like the performance , and I beleve that setup is better performing than the Samsung drive + no adapers needed
Cost though is an issue as these rare drives are 2 or 3 times the price of the samsung

Edit here is another thread to look at
http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/522350-cf-29-ssds-possible-get-around-ide-bottleneck.html

 

ok so it got my Toughbook.

And it is a CF-29CTKGZDM. I have no idea what that means and if its good or bad. It looks like it has a backlit keyboard. But when I took it out it only had two cables. And I thought the backlit has three???

The keyboard says Made in Mexico and has a number of 029375???

It does not have a hard drive caddy and is missing the usb port cover.

It all came out to $147.00. And if I want I can keep it or send it back. or get $30 back in credit. and keep it.

 

Also the site that i got this from has a lot of 18 Panasonic Laptop Power Adapters for auction.
The high bid is at_____ $93.88
It has less then 24 hours left...

What do yuou guys think is it worth it???

Here is the list....

•6 - Panasonic CF-AA1653 M2 15.6V / 5.0 Amp
•2 - Panasonic CF-AA1653 M1 15.6V / 5.0 Amp
•1 - Panasonic CF-AA1653A J4 15.6V / 5.0 Amp
•2 - Panasonic CF-AA1653A M4 15.6V / 5.0 Amp
•3 - Panasonic CF-AA1639A M1 15.6V / 3.85 Amp
•1 - Panasonic CF-AA1639 M2 15.6V / 3.85 Amp
•3 - Panasonic CF-AA1639 M7 15.6V / 3.85 Amp


__________

 

If you can power it on ,hit Fn F12 to see if the keyboard lites up
The rubber backlit had only 2 conectors on some models
Is the keyboard rubber or hard keys

Look for a caddy

 

It is rubber, I yes it is backlit... It looks kinda green and is not very bright, but it does have 3 settings.

Should I keep this and just get a caddy and the cover for the port or return it and buy another one.

And what do you all think about the chagers???

And the site is Stealitback.com......

 

As I said find a caddy and price it out first
Then you can make an informed decision on keeping it
All these items add up quick + the shipping from different sellers , you might find a deal on a complete cf-29 for $400 and save money in the end

What are you missing on your cf-29 now that you see it , optical , battery etc

 

It means:

CF-29CTKGZDM DESCRIPTION:
Pentium M 1.2GHz ULV (Centrino), 13.3" Transmissive touch screen, 40GB HDD, 256 MB RAM, 56K/LAN, Floppy Disk Drive, Intel PRO Wireless LAN, WIN 2000

You can decide "Good -vs- "Bad"

Does it have a white stripe down the center of the Space Bar? If so, the keyboard has been changed since it left the factory.

If not, it isn't backlit.

There's another hundred bucks (+/-) outlay.

 

Has any one used an Optical Drive Hard Drive Caddy to boot from?

Optical Bay HDD : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

From the looks of it you can have an SSD or HDD in SATA with out ever having to MOD the Hadr Drive Caddy for SATA.

My my though is can you boot from one. If you can boot from these, then you dont need a Hard Drive Caddy. and these are much cheaper.

 

There is a seller on fleabay selling them for about $20.00-$25.00 . I have one but was using it just for extra storage only. If I am right you will have to do the cd-rom mod to it, can't remember for sure how I did it since it was about a year ago .

 

Dropped mine a few times and I'm good but I am not gonna tell you it's fools proof. These were drops that weren't desktop height or an off course rally car doing 9 flips ejecting the Toughbook into the woods. Either way I took the risk cause I have a backup IDE caddy not too far from the unit. You can leave almost all the padding in tact it's gonna be a...trying to get it back together again. Best advice is do not try and perform this mod in 6 minutes. Take your time trying to reseat the hdd in the lower half of the caddy and DO REMOVE THE 90 DEGREE METAL BRACKET.

 

Does any know if there is a protective filter screen that would be on my laptop. It almost looks like one but I can get it off and im not about to start prying on it just in case its not one.

Aslo I do not have any built in SD card slot. Is that only on the newer 29s or can I add one?

And THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP

 

Someone correct me, if there is one turning the shower to full hot getting the bathroom steamed up with toughbook in the bathroom(not tub) will loosen the film if it is there. Both my 72 came with it and it appears to be scratched to hell and beyond. The touch screen shouldn't come off if you gently put a fingernail under this sheet you think you may see.

 

What is your full model number?
I put a pcmcia sd card reader in my mk2. Only the mk4 and mk5's had the sd reader built in. I don't think the earlier mks have the port on the motherboard to connect an oem sd card reader.

 

yeah you can add one to the slot from these. Ask around which one was the best. Beware of the Hong Kong knock offs. Even if it did work when shipped by the time it gets to you it's parts in a box.

pcmcia card reader items - Get great deals on Computers Networking, Cameras Photo items on eBay.com!

 

It is a CF-29CTKGZDM...

Also I have noticed what looks like and external antenna connector next to the port replicator. Does any one know what that is and what it does?

 

Toughbook805, Might be time for you to have a look at the stickies at the top of the forum. The ones labeled "READ BEFORE POSTING", its amazing how much information can be found there.
CAP

 

Thanks capt.dogfish.

I have been reading a lot of those and older stuff going back years. Other wise I would be asking a lot more. Thanks for you help I happy that its there.

 

CF-29CTKGZDM DESCRIPTION:
Pentium M 1.2GHz ULV (Centrino), 13.3" XGA Transmissive Touch Screen, 40GB HDD, Floppy Disk Drive, 256MB RAM, 56K Modem, Ethernet LAN, Intel PRO Wireless LAN, Windows 2000

Funny; it doesn't show up in the original configuration.

However; since it's there < >, it's a Hi-Gain antenna pass-thru connector for the vehicle dock. It is probably currently configured to work with the WLAN.

 

Thanks Topcop. So deos that mean I can use and external antenna?

 

You may want to drop the base and verify the external antenna pass-thru cable is actually connected to the WLAN card first.