Picked Up a SWEET CF-M34 today!

I won a very nice, almost new CF-M34 today on ebay. ($355) The seller lived local and allowed for a local pickup to save on shipping. (An AWESOME Seller!) It is a 866Mhz with wifi built in. He said it needed a hard drive and battery so I bought a 4Ah battery from Toughbook-Gear. (Another great seller!) Well... It turns out the battery in it is fine. Doing a refresh now. I haven't had a chance to see if the hard drive caddy is missing or not. He said he "thinks" the caddy is there.... And maybe even the drive. (But doesn't work.)

I'm doing a refresh right now... I'll tear it apart tomorrow and see what's needed. I'll post back ten. I plan to use it as the "House Web Surfer" for now... Even though I have 28, 29s & now 34s scattered around the house that I do that on anyway.

 

Nice! If only I had the cash, and more room to take crap with me, I'd be the same way.

I gotta finish up the GPS in my 600. I haven't mounted my antenna permanently yet... but once I do, it's gonna be sold.

 

TB,
We may have to have a contest between you and Modly. Modly with the "ink" and you with the Toughbooks. Who can get the most.

 

Right now I have probably 20 laptops in my house.... And 3 desktop units.

EDIT - Half the Toughbooks are close to "parts only" laptops...

 

Ha, I'm not heavily inked yet... only four tats right now, but if money permits, I'll get two more this year.

My brother though... He is making good cash, and has a half sleeve, and in a few weeks, he'll start on his left arm.

I should become a repo guy eh?

 

Yeah, but Modly has that Apple inked on his nether regions.

 

Naw, it's just a piercing that has end caps that resemble aqua buttons.

 

Now THERE's a mental Polaroid I didn't need rattling around my mind, causing untold havoc...

mnem
*Must... scrub... eyeballs... with... Clorox... and... wirebrush...*

 

So anyway... Getting off the balls/chlorox/nether talk... I just took off the bottom cover... <I just couldn't sleep not knowing> and found the caddy and a hard drive in there! <YIPPEE!> While I had it open I put in a 40Gb drive that had windoze loaded on it already from the 2nd CF-29 I bought... Just for fun I booted it up. WRONG! BSOD right away... I just put it back into battery refresh mode for the rest of the night. I'll order a 60GB, 7200rpm drive for it tomorrow. Either that or just go ahead and put in a 100Gb drive. I have 5 or 6 of those left.

Anyway... I gotta get some sleep.

 

Nice buy!

What do you think of the M34s compaired to the CF-28s, their build quality, and design and such.

I've got my grubby mits on CF-27's 28's and 29's.

 

I've probably got you beat on quantity, but I would guess that you have me beat on quality hands-down

 

The 34 doesn't look as tough as the 28... But then there is less weight to the 34. (If you are talking about accidentally dropping it.) I need to learn how to load software with the PCMCIA card >>>CD Rom. I'm not sure how to do it and haven't read up on it yet. I think there were a few posts here about it... I'll have to search. (Unless someone can give me a quick run-down.)

 

Can't help you here. Never worked on one.

 

im with stupid =) just messin wit ya zero

 

You can install the OS using USB cd rom drive. Look on the bios boot menu.

 

I have a USB Floppy and a PCMCIA CD Rom... Not a USB CD Rom... I guess I could always buy one.. But then I'd have to wait.

 

I tried the PCMCIA cd rom before but no go, maybe there are some setup that I mis.. or something.

Also you can buy aftermarket usb cd rom adapter. Its cheap around 6-8 buck.

 

But here's my issue. (And I know I need to read up.) They all require that I load a Win 98 driver. So it looks like I need to load at least DOS. The other thing I saw online was (supposedly) a way to remove the hard drive and put it in an enclosure and then transfer the WinXP disk to it... Then load from there.

You know... I never really paid attention to all the M34 posts around here... I need to do some searching and reading...

 

Really quite easy.
Partition your new drive with one small (less then 5gig) and one large partition. Copy from your xp disk, the i386 folder to the small partition.
Put it back in your computer and boot from a win98 boot floppy.
Change to the small partition and run winnt.exe
It should load from there

GB

 

No need to load the 98 driver, just xp driver if you are going to laod xp on it. Ok! i will send also the drivers for xp.

 

GB - Are you sure that works with SP2? I could have sworn that only works with SP1. That's why I did a minimal install of '98 from the same partition, then as soon as it loads, invoke XP setup, then convert main partition to NTFS...

mnem
*Hmmmmm-ily*

mnem

 

I have all the M34 drivers already... I just need to find a boot solution that works. It looks like the easy way would be to get a USB CD Rom.

 

The floppy plugs into the replicator... I can't even get this to recognize that it has a floppy. I have a First Aid Disk that The Inspector sent with the CF-17 I bought... I am using that floppy and <trying to use> the CD Rom too. No dice on either. They just sit there and stare at me.... (They have VERY small eyes)

EDIT - I just tried the floppy on the CF-17 and it works like a charm... Hmmm. No support on the CF-M34 though....

 

i know that some earlier versions needed a special panasonic pcmcia cd-rom in order to load. not sure if that is the issue for you. if you could do a network install and network boot that might help.

 

I've read up on the LAN Boot option and it seems rather involved... I am/was looking for the easier way out. It appears I have a USB CD Rom on the way that should work. I have a bunch of CF-28s to build in the meantime.

 

I think that docking station for the 17 will work for the 34 if that helps any...

 

Gene... Yes... It fits like a glove! But it doesn't see the floppy during boot... Nor the CD since there is no driver loaded for it.... So Mnem is mailing me a CD Rom to use....

**Livesaver**