New-ish CF-28 owner looking for advice.

Hey guys.
I've browsed the forums here a few times in the past when I got my first CF-28 (600 MHz) about a year ago. I had a bit too much fun trying to fix it up and inevitably it ended up as a pile of unassembled laptop. Found a super good condition 600 MHz model on ebay for $60 (no HD caddy or AC adapter) and just swapped my other hard drive into it for a working one.

Now, as a side job I do some engineering with a friend who is the chief engineer for a group of radio stations. I showed him the Toughbook I got and he immediately wanted to get one as an engineering machine to bring around to all the transmitter sites. Long story short he got an 800 MHz model off ebay for about $125 (missing HD caddy and AC adapter as usual). I took it home last night to go through it and make sure it worked ok using some of my parts and my heart slightly sank when I was going into BIOS to use the battery refresh utility. I'm sure you know what I'm about to say as it's a subject no one likes to talk about on forums, but yep...it had a BIOS password.

I'm not TOO upset about it, but if the BIOS settings aren't set to boot off CD or have the touchscreen enabled it's going to be a real turd to set up once we get the HD/HD caddy he just bought off ebay. If all of the settings are the way they should be, then we can live with that.

Now, I'm not going to ask for help with utilities or whatever to clear the password, but what I am curious about is if flashing the BIOS with the same firmware (or newer if available) will do anything at all to clear this up. If this is a subject I shouldn't be asking about, tell me, but I am being honest about this. I love these machines and hate to see one slightly gimped like this.

I do have the spare parts laying around from the first 600 MHz unit I tore apart. As a last resort, I could do some surface mount soldering work and swap the BIOS chip from that motherboard to the 800 unit. Any idea if that would work?

I appreciate any help you guys can offer, but I do understand if you can't help with the subject.

Thanks.

-Chris

 

You dont need to do anything that complicated, take the locked machine apart and toward the back where the little lithium yellow circle battery pack is located simply unplug it from the motherboard and let it sit for like 5 minutes, re plug it back in and put everything back together and the password should be gone. Basically that lithium battery powers the chipset so it doesnt loose memory settings (ie bios passwords) when the computer is off or main battery is dead. I've used this many times to get rid of the same problem on ones I bought on ebay. Hope this makes sense and helps!

 

Hate to say it but simply removing the battery probably won't work.
When it is all apart and both batteries removed, power the unit up, using the power supply, a few times.
This will normally clear the password.
If this does not work, there is another method described in the service manual using a special jumper plug that you have to build.

Bob

 

Unplugging the lithium battery pack has worked for me every time.....

 

Just wanted to say thanks to the battery suggestion. Ended up working perfect! BIOS is back to normal, the hard drive is now installed, and the battery it came with charged up and actually gives a good 2+ hours of power. My friend was psyched to get the machine back and is already carrying it everywhere. It'll be great using these at the transmitter sites since no cases are needed and they actually HAVE a serial port unlike most newer machines.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the spare CF-28 parts I've accumulated so far. It's kind of fun fixing these up.