Quick question for CF-48 owners

How do you remove the CD/DVD drive?!?! Is it even possible to remove it? I bought a "shell" with guaranteed-working mobo, but it didn't have an optical drive. I figured it would be a somewhat simple matter to pull it from my old 48 and put it in this one.. but.. How the heck is it held in there?

 

There are two screws accessible from the hard drive compartment these are what attach the drive to the chassis. Just remove the screws and push the drive out.

 

thank you! It seems so obvious now, but I don't think I ever would've figured it out without breaking something first!

 

Grav... I have the complete CF-48 Schematics and manuals if you need them...

 

Yes, that'll help. appreciate it.

Next CF48 question: Where would be the best place to put wifi antennas in one of these? The trim around the LCD panel is plastic on the inside, so I think a skinny one might work in there. Should I put both of them in the LCD lid? I was thinking maybe one in the palmrest pointing up, to get a different signal direction.

 

gravitar, sorry i missed this thread, the stock wi-fi antennas are at the right palm rest beside the optical drive, and the other one is at the tab button beside the pcmcia bay. both are at edge of outside case. btw you won't get the range as a mil spec rugged book does, but good enough for around the house. all 1.8ghz p4's and 1.4ghz centrinos i have seen have antennas installed even if they did'nt have wi-fi option. centrinos are tricky, i have only got them to recognize the intel 2100 "B" card as they were factory installed with-not upgradable as it seems. the p4's on the other hand i install intel 2915 "ABG" cards and they work fine.

 

Grav, the two paddle-type antennae (mounted left & right side of lower case), has limited reception. A higher powered wifi card will do better but won't beat an externally mounted rig.

BTW, which DVD-RW drive did you opted for? The one in mine is cranky as well.

I swapped out the "B" for a Atheros AR5006X Mini PCI and it works like a charm in my 1.4ghz CF-48. Ditto for the AR5005GS card, so it is upgradeable.

Regards,
Ron

 

ToughNut, is your 1.4 ghz cf-48 a p4 or a centrino?

 

48user, it's a 1.4 centrino but after I removed the Intel Pro card, the bootup splash showed Pentium M. I kinda recall that for something to 'qualify' as Centrino (a marketing 'brand' and not processor model), it takes 3 intel chips; ie. on the mainboard, the processor and the wifi card. Could be wrong though.

 

Well tonight I decided to dive back into our 48 to mount the antennas. For some reason I wasn't prepared for this being as tricky as it turned out to be! That miniPCI slot is pretty well isolated from the rest of the notebook.. I did end up finding a way to snake the cables through and get them connected though. I'll take a couple pics before I screw it all together.

I originally thought I'd put a tiny antenna up in the LCD housing, but once I started cracking it open, I realized there wasn't much unshielded plastic for a signal to radiate out of, so I gave up on that. The lousy un-toughbook-like way the LCD housing is held together didn't make me want to finish trying to crack it apart either

I finally settled on sticking two little "flag" antennas into the palmrest. I've got a couple of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=270296914912

Since they're too big to fit inside the support ribs molded into the plastic cover, I'm going to see what happens if I trim the antennae down just a little bit with a knife or scissors.. Hopefully they won'd be useless after that!

One question, for anyone that might know.. Does the sticky tab stick to the plastic cover? I've got a Toshiba that uses the same kind of antennas, and I recall them sticking to the outer plastic cover of the LCD panel. I would guess that if I orient them backwards, they wouldn't pick up any signal at all!

 

Grav,
I think "a little" is the operative phrase. I trimmed one of the flags to fit under the corner bumper on a CF-28 display. I think I trimmed too much as it failed to get much of a signal after trimming. I don't think it matters which side of the flag is facing out.
CAP

 

I'll confine my trimming to the edges where there's no foil inside. I guess it doesn't have to be real securely attached to the plastic anyway. As far as I remember from the toshiba (that i don't want to have to open back up to confirm!) the sticky part stuck to the outer plastic cover.. but hopefully you're right and it doesn't matter either way