Now here's an interesting concept!

Take a look at this CF27.. notice anything unusual?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200239919721

I almost bought it just to see how they did it. I've got a project right now that I would like to do exactly that!

 

Yeah, there is something unusual - no V key!

Haha, actually what's really unusual is that they intentionally put the screen on facing backwards. Makes sense for using it as a real tablet I suppose, but rather inconvenient for typing But hey, you have to make tradeoffs for improv tablets!

 

I saw that. Wonder if they were using the cable for an ext monitor when using the key board.

 

All they did was flip the monitor around backwards... What's the mystery?

 

There's a bit of cable re-routing & re-bending do do.

 

But why would anyone do that?? Odd typing what you can't see, unless that fellow has tablet windoze and intend to use touchscreen input. Little advantage for regular use IMHO.
Ron in SG

 

Ron,
Poor man's CF-18. He probably uses an on screen keyboard, available from Panasonic and some after market vendors.
Cap

 

I'm playing with something similar for a CF-28 without a keyboard - one of the connectors is broken. You just open the back of the LCD and reroute the cables, then attach the LCD backwards. For the -28 the LCD case is too large to let the reversed LCD close all the way, so I am planning on removing it, and add something else thinner to allow it to close - maybe find a way to fix the LCD to the rest of the case. Or maybe spacers will help to raise it enough.
Then use a USB (or wireless) keyboard to operate - for my car-pc/solar-pc/astro-pc 'project'. You lose the touchpad, but you've got a touchscreen so no great loss there.

Add floppy boot-to-USB stick and no hard drive needed.

<with that cable I would guess it was probably used as an instrument PC(?) >

 

this peaked my interest because i got a free gutted megatouch (touchscreen bartop game) and i was figuring out how to do something just like that with one of my surplus CF27s!

There's a lot of applications for something like this. Most industrial control panels use something very much like this for process control. And, if you can believe it, they get away with charging several thousand dollars for them! a 12" touchscreen is considered a BIG display in the industrial world.. Most of the time I can only dream of working with 800x600 in color.. I'm usually stuck trying to control a machine from a 5.5" monochrome (not even greyscale) display!

 

Thanks, Kevin, I see your point. Interesting way to extend the service life of a CF-27 but how would you hook up the 27 to those machines... via serial port? Industrial machines won't have USB port, or do they?

 

Lab equipment I am familiar with was controlled by parallel port, hence the extension cable (possibly) still attached to the pc.

 

All our dredge position equipment and wireless video modems require serial IO leading to the use of 4-port PCMCIA/serial dongles which are not cheap.

 

Any fieldbus that has a PCMCIA, serial, parallel, or USB interface. Which means just about all of them

Just as an example, Allen-Bradley sold a software version of their PLC-5, called SoftLogix5. I could add their HMI product, RSView32, and use a PCMCIA Remote I/O adapter to connect with all the I/O.

Now that's an old-school example.. They sell the equivalent version of their more current products, but I don't know offhand how well they'd run on a 300 MHz machine, if at all. But the PLC-5 is still a very respectable platform and fully capable of controlling just about any size machine.

Now of course this wouldn't be CHEAP because the A-B software is still pretty costly, and I wouldn't ever dream of using unlicensed software But I'm sure there's 3rd party HMI software packages that interfaces well with an A-B hardware PLC and doesn't cost much.. This would be where something like this would shine.