Repairs or mods that ended in FAIL...

Post your stories and photos of things that went bad in a repair, upgrade or mod of a Toughbook...

We want to hear the "Oh crap where is the smoke coming from?" or "Where do I put the brick I just made?" stories.

Minor one to start, I was trying to remove a perfect touch panel from a CF74 using a screwdriver....Why a screwdriver? I don't don't know, moment of stupid or lazy...Seconds later it wasn't such a nice touch panel anymore...

...

 

I've got two... When I started modding these things back in 2006.

First one was when I was swapping LCDs... I just pulled one of the connectors that have the tiny little wires going into the connector. They pulled right out of the connector! I remember thinking, "Well these things are THAT tough!" LOL

Second was when I was when I swapped a monitor when the battery was still in. (AFTER I learned how to remove the connector!) I blew the little fuse on the CF-28 motherboard. I couldn't find a SMD fuse as I hadn't built up a parts inventory at that time. I ended up using a 1A Buss fuse for a car. I soldered it right in and it worked like a charm.

Strangely enough... I think that is all I have. I can remember doing stupid stuff and then gritting my teeth and closing my eyes thinking, "Did I REALLY just do that?" But the Toughbooks are, I have found, extremely forgiving to a novice modder. You just need the stones to start doing stuff... And maybe an extra few bucks to buy an extra <whatever> to fix what you need.

Good idea for a thread Shawn!

 

Oh yeah... I guess we ALL have broken a CF-28 keyboard connector.... RIGHT???

Then we learned how to shim them to make them work anyway!?

 

Car fuse....LOL..at least it wasn't a house fuse..

 

Thanks for the laughs
The laugh is always on the loser.
I had described here in the forum my power-on-fail while I exchanged the CCFL against LED some years ago on my first CF-29. Do u remember?
And I destroyed the glued LCD and touchscreen from a CF-T8 as I tried to exchange that against a 1400x1050 IPS panel... I bought a new touchscreen...

 

Here is the story. Linky-->> http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/471036-changing-ccfl-led-display.html

I was trying of using an logic-inverter, but to my bad I was soldering at the PWM-pin in a unheeding moment, as the machine was on
Now I have no signal on the pin. I destroyed probably IC106 or IC107 (in the well known schematic of CF-29 Main14 LCD I/F 5F). And at the moment I have no idea, where to find the chips on the mainboard for repair.


Great story....

 

oooh, it's good that this thread only opened after I started 19'MK7 frankenstein!!!
It was my first toughbook mod and it went perfect!!

 

Braggart!

 

I think that was one of my first post about on here.....I think a member named "Toughbook" told me I just killed my CF-28

 

Hmmm, did this morning my first: I bricked my mc7305 wwan modem by flashing the firmware. I knew I shouldn't do that, so why did I do that anyway?!!!

 

It's the little voices that we hear in our head.... do it...do it..do it ... :yes:

 

When I started on this forum I had one CF-29. Now I have two of those and two CF-19's as well and I LOVE to tinker.




The potential for FAIL has increased exponentially. Stay tuned for my next post in this thread detailing the error of my ways.

 

I made the mistake of telling my Friend's son that there was "nothing that could be entered into the computer that would damage it" in my attempts at getting him to learn the OS. So, being a kid and thus quite literal, he put a penny inside the CD/DVD slot onto the motherboard!

But, despite some strange functioning while I figured out what was wrong with it, the Toughbook survived!

 

I received a computer to repair...lol... So going down the list I pulled the power and battery then the ram. Laying under the bottom ram was a screw that normally goes in the keyboard bezel. I never followed up as the model was too cheap for a mobo replacement...it went back to the customer. I don't do fuses.
Is this what is called screwing it up?
Not my screw-up but definitely made me be careful.

J'd

 

I made the mistake of telling my Friend's son that there was "nothing that could be entered into the computer that would damage it" in my attempts at getting him to learn the OS. So, being a kid and thus quite literal, he put a penny inside the CD/DVD slot onto the motherboard!

But, despite some strange functioning while I figured out what was wrong with it, the Toughbook survived!

 

I had a 28, one of my first Toughbooks, and was doing a simple mod to install an internal wifi card. I was using a small screwdriver to route the antenna wire between the mobo and side of the battery compartment when I heard a small "click". Then it would not boot. Looking at the mobo with a magnifying glass I could see a tiny SMT transistor was missing. Took 2-3 hours to disassemble it and remove the mobo, actually found the SMT transistor and very carefully re-soldered it, Boy those leads were tiny. Then it booted up and worked great!

Several months later was fooling around inside again with some forceps and heard a small "click" . . . . . . . .