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    Problem with Toughbook Cf-27 and DVD rom

    Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by kotsoswin, Apr 28, 2009.

  1. kotsoswin

    kotsoswin Notebook Guru

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    I bought a Panasonic CF-27 with a DVD rom installed CF-VDD272 the laptop came with windows 98SE. Whenever I insert a cd or a DVD in the drive the light lights up but the cd does not spin. Am I doing something wrong or do I have a faulty drive? Drivers seem to be installed fine. Please help!
     
    kotsoswin, Apr 28, 2009
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  2. Rob

    Rob Toughbook Aficionado

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    Most likely a faulty drive. I've seen this before.

    As far as a DVD is concerned (especially running 98se) you would need to make sure you have a decoder installed on your machine.

    Before troubleshooting DVD's you should always start with CD's.

    Also I've seen broken drives that read DVD's and not CD's and vise versa (read CD's but not DVD's). If your drive doesn't read either then it's probably cheesed
     
    Rob, Apr 28, 2009
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  3. mnementh

    mnementh Crusty Ol' TinkerDwagon

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    MmMhmmmm... My suspicion would be that at some point, someone put that drive together with a machine as old as that CF-27 BECAUSE they knew it was hosed & just wanted to fill the hole so they could unload the laptop. A working CF-27/28/29 DVD drive still brings 50-60 bux on eBay - I've seen working CF-27s sell for half that. Besides, unless you install a hardware DVD decoder (Like the PCMCIA Margi DVD To Go), it won't play DVDs anyways... not enough RAM/Processor.

    mnem
    Whatever hits the fan; it will NOT be evenly distributed...
     
    mnementh, Apr 28, 2009
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  4. kotsoswin

    kotsoswin Notebook Guru

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    Cheers guys, I also agree that it is most likely a faulty drive. I got in touch with the company who sold me the laptop and they are sending me another DVD drive from the UK. They seem like a legitimate business so I do not think that they did it on purpose. I will let you know how it turns out.

    I do not want the drive to play movies. Actually I just wanted to install windows XP on the machine (it has 256 mb ram and 20 Gb of HDD) as well as Microsoft office.

    Also another question. My machine has a wireless antena and has a sim card slot (GSM) next to the memory modules. It also comes with a dial up modem. If I insert my sim card in the slot will it connect to the internet? Is it using GPRS technology to do that?
     
    kotsoswin, Apr 29, 2009
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  5. Rob

    Rob Toughbook Aficionado

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    Yes you can as long as you have internet enabled on your cell phone plan that is tied to that SIM card - It will be PAINFULLY slow however as those are only 53.6kbps modems
     
    Rob, Apr 29, 2009
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