Recently purchased my first Toughbook(CF-29) and have some questions.

Last week I got my first Toughbook. It's a CF-29 and I believe it's a mk3? The model number is CF-29HTM50BM. I did quite a bit of shopping around before I purchased the one I did, and I think I got a great deal. It's a 1.4ghz pentium M, and it came with a 40gb hard drive,512mb of ram, and a CD-rom drive. The Touch screen works flawlessly, the battery is original and holds a charge, and the Charger is original. They even included a protective film for the Touchscreen(not installed).There are some minor cosmetic blemishes, but nothing serious. All in all I was expecting it to be in worse shape. It seems to be a genuine Refurb(not just some guy who wipes the hard drive and polishes the case up a bit), and it came with a 90 day warranty. I payed $350 for it. Overstock.com was selling the same computer for almost $100 more than I payed. I went to their site just to read the reviews written by people who had bought them and it was very discouraging. There were reports of dead batteries optical drives not working, as well as problems with keys on the keyboard.

I've done a lot of research in the past week answering most of my questions, but there are some I couldn't resolve.

1.) There's an extendable (about 2-3") Antenna on the top left hand corner of the screen. This isn't mentioned in the manual I downloaded. What is this antenna for? There's a little connector that comes out in the compartment for the PCMCIA card, is this attached to the antenna?

2.) At the back of the computer, on both of the corners, there's some metal rectangular shaped rings. They look like they might be to attach a shoulder strap or maybe some sort of in-vehicle retainer straps? Does anyone know what these are for?

3. ) Is this a Mk3? the model number is CF-29HTM50BM, and I think that means it should be a mk3, but I saw a chart somewhere(of course I can't find it now) that listed the different mk's and their features, and it seems like mine didn't have the same features as the mk 3's? (If it helps,mine has 2 USB ports. One on the side, and one on the back)

4.) Can I get any sort of SD card reader that will work with this system? I do a lot of photography and it would help a lot if I could read directly from the card.

5.) Some day I might like to install an internal GPS. Is there a recommended unit for this? I don't need anything too fancy and It's gonna have to be somewhat economical.

I'm very happy with this machine so far. It's gonna be pretty tough for me to justify ever buying any other type of laptop.


Thanks for reading.

Eric

 

Welcome to the afflicted. You now have the Toughbook disease!

You should be able to determine the Mark of this laptop on the .jp drivers site based on the model number. The full website link is in one of the sticky's. I'm not an expert but I believe the antenna is there for wireless/GPS. This being the case you should be able to add GPS if the sled is there. I'd also check the unofficial CF-29 thread for how to modify the hard drive caddy to work with SATA instead of IDE hard drives. Read, read, read, and read some more!

 

the antenna is for a WWAN sled for cellular broadband, but from your description you do not have the sled and card.

the CF-29H is a mark 3 of the series.

and here is a good chunk of everything you will EVER need to know about that lovely CF-29


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=241106

now I have no idea if any of the mark 3's had a card reader integrated ( my mark 4 and 5's do) but ANY USB card reader will work for you


and again welcome to the toughbook club

 

Going to http://www.config.toughbook.com/ will give you an idea what you have when it was NEW but SBC/seller might of pulled a few things out before it was sold to you. Read the sticky that Tomcat57 started here : **READ BEFORE POSTING** **The Ultimate Toughbook Resource Thread** then read these The CF-29 F.A.Q. - Read me before posting and The Unofficial Panasonic CF-29 Toughbook Thread! . Bookmark the last one because it's not a sticky and doesn't stay at the top of the forum and you can lose it easy. There has been a fair bit of talk about your model "SBC" and a lot on fleabay at the moment. SBC bought 22,000 CF-29 Toughbooks, read the story here http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/hotNews.asp and my guess they are upgrading again which is why you got one.

Below is what I got for you CF-29
***SBC ONLY***Pentium M 738-1.4G LV (Centrino),13.3Transmissive touch XGA,512MB,40GB, WLAN802.11a+b+g, Win XP SP2, Tester I/F, EDGE(GC83), logo, asset tag, replaceable RJ11 jack

 

I have 2 PCMCIA card readers, one for CF and the other for all the smaller sized cards - SDHC, XD, MS, etc a lot neater than the usb readers!

The antenna is connected to the wire in the PCMCIA bay, this is for a sierra 850 pcmcia 3G WWAN card - there may also be a metal plate over one slot, this is just to prevent the 850 card from coming dislodged.

 

What does SBC mean?

Edit: Never mind.. I probably should have read the articles you posted before responding.. lol

 

No problem at all. Check here for the card reader ( SD ) http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=sd...readers&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313
or for the 5 in 1 card http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=5+...readers&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313
but remember the ones overseas takes at least 3-4 weeks.

 

My retired "new" SBC CF-29HTM50BM came with the WWAN card still installed and it is a Sony-Ericsson GC83 EDGE card. It works just great with my AT&T Laptop Connect data account.

The plate retains the card and the antenna connection to the card.

BTW: the connector is completely different from that to fit a Sierra card: I have them all: 750, 850 and 881, as well as the Option GT MAX 3.6.

 

Hello,
I am French, so please excuse language mistakes...
I also recently buy a CF-29HTM508M (which is a Mk3 model, with Wifi, 1,4ghz processor, 40GO HDD, 756MO RAM) and I have a question regarding the GC83 sony WAN card: I tried to remove it in order to insert a SIMcard, but it appears to be impossible. Does anyone have the solution?
thank you very much for your help

 

Hi! it is very simple. Open the PCMCIA cover. Then unscrew the two screw below and pull out the metal cover. Unplug the antena connector. There are two connector on it one for the module and one on the antena cable which is an mmcx type. Choose the mmcx one it is more easy to unplug. Then using the release bar for PCMCIA you can take out the Module. The sim card slot is at the midle of it. Good Luck.

ohlip

 

Thank so much ohlip,
I didn't understand how it was mounted
I will do it soon
best regards