Some CF-30 Mod Ideas

So I've been browsing around eBay lately and thinking about a couple of mods that I'm actually very surprised I've yet to see. The first one being the inside LCD and keyboard/touchpad housings being repainted. All over eBay and the rest of the internet, people are selling repainted CF-30's with everything redone except those two parts. Right now I have a fully "blacked out" CF-30, and the silver in these two areas bothers me. (I know, small details, but I love my Toughbook too much). Has anyone here attempted such a thing before? To clarify, I'm talking about these parts:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-T...reen-Replacement-pn-L5F30515P00-/191887420638
(Minus the LCD screen itself)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NICE-TOUCHPAD-HOUSING-for-PANASONIC-TOUGHBOOK-CF-30-DFKM0555-/291823043511
(Just the silver areas)

Obviously the touchpad itself would be a bit trickier, since painting it would render it useless.


The second idea, which I thought of after coming across another modded CF-30 on eBay, was to have a better touchscreen in the CF-30 that would be much more responsive and sensitive, and have a glass screen, similar to those on today's modern tablets and touchscreen computers. As nice as the digitizer touchscreen is in the CF-30, it is by no means sensitive enough to be useful to me. I'd be absolutely thrilled if this were possible to switch out with something better. Now as for the inspiration, all credit goes to this guy's product:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/KEVLAR-LINE...ok-CF-30C-13020HRS-GLASS-SCREEN-/322199672016
(The non-touchscreen LCD was replaced with a glass one, providing a much clearer picture)


Any thoughts or ideas? Has anyone here attempted such things before? I'd love to hear of any stories related to these ideas too!

 

You missed my thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/cf-31-mk3-construction-site-edition.785766/



You can paint touchpads. I have a black painted one on my CF 52.

A digitizer and a Touchscreen are different.
All "touchscreens" are going to perform about the same. What you "need" is a digitizer which mounts behind the LCD and uses a different stylus. A digitizer will not work with your finger.
Getting a proper size digitizer panel is the issue. 13.1" 4:3 digitizers are few and far between. Most are widescreen.

I have a sheet of plexiglas I was going to use to replace a defective touchsceen years ago. I ended up selling the CF30 as is and still have the plexiglas.

 

Love the paint job! That looks great!!!

What did you use to paint the touchpad? Has it had any issues since then? How well has the paint held up?

Damn, I was worried about that with the screen. I'm guessing no one has attempted this yet then.

 

Thanks,
Regular spray paint. Probably Satin finish Krylon. I cleaned it thoughly with rubbing alcohol then I just VERY VERY lightly scuffed the touchpad. Several light coats of paint, allowing 10 minutes or so between coats..
Paint has held up great.
I checked into the digitizer but I could not find the correct size panel for a reasonable price.

 

hmmm ...
shawn and myself were *discussing* the possibilities of using electroluminescent panels in the "toughbook" badge area .
OLEDs have dropped in price ... i wonder how much an oled panel would cost .
there is room inside of the '30/31 lid for a controller ... bluetooth access/programing would be best .
in place of the "toughbook" logo one could make a reader-board type display .

 

I was actually shopping around yesterday trying to find a basic, nice LCD touchscreen on eBay that would fit, just for curiosity on price. Shawn is right. They are not easy to come by in that size and screen ratio, sadly. I'm definitely thinking about his painting idea, though. I'd love to finish off the last of the black on here. The big thing holding me back is that I would lose my beautiful Toughbook logos in the process!

CWB32, if you guys pulled it off, you would be gods in the Toughbook modding community. (Not that you probably aren't already!)
I'd absolutely love to see some intricate mods like this! With how versatile and easy to upgrade these systems are, I'm surprised there aren't more extreme modders out there messing with them. Every time I open mine up to add something new, I just see so much more untapped potential hiding in there.

 

"Every time I open mine up to add something new, I just see so much more untapped magic smoke hiding in there."

CFA
(corrected for accuracy)

 

Only if that magic smoke is there for the "ooo's" and "aww's" at how well these systems are made!

 

One thing I would really like is the ability to tear out the phone modem and to install another serial port. The entire modem card would have to go, but behind that hardware is a serial interface that could be usable.

 

Phone modem is plug in and very easily removed

 

Yes it is, and that is just about the most standard part, even across laptop manufacturers. My Micron laptop from 1998 probably has the same modem in it that a much newer Toughbook has.

I thought that maybe someone had come up with the thought before of building a driver circuit to make an output compatible with RS232. I dug through Google for any hit on things along that line and did not find anything. That was interesting as I could not of been the first one to think of this. --- or maybe I am the first, how ironic that yet another unique idea from me comes around 15 years too late to be a big money-maker (lol).

All that a modem does that is slightly unique is the use of "AT" commands to set up the modem to dial numbers, make calls, set port parameters, etc... Those AT commands can be discarded, repurposed (or filtered out if a new driver was written). You could even make a module that replaces the mini phone RJ-11 jack with an RJ-45 RS-232 port (some minor surgery might be needed to make it fit).

 

CF 30 modem schematic. Serial port is probably on motherboard.

 

Going off that idea, I'd love for a way to fit a second battery in there without the need to remove the disc drive. That and upgrade the disc drive to something better. (I'm sure the latter is probably easily possible, but I haven't researched the connections or caddy for it yet).

 

Optical drive is PATA on a CF30.
I had a bluray drive in mine for a while. I might still have the bare drive.

 

Sweet! That was exactly what I was hoping for.

 

now that is a good idea ...
take a device that is hardly used these days and replace it with a usable port .