cf-28 internal port (cn18)

For the connectors:
Check ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2775621&postcount=291) and following.

The hirose connectors are
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2775621&postcount=291

Digikey has them at
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/us/dksus.dll?Detail?name=OR732CT-ND
I think Toughbook was looking at ordering some.

 

I have and use most of the major CAD software ProE – AutoDesk – SolidWorks – MasterCam for one of my little businesses manufacturing over seas.
MasterCam – X is what I like for the type of work Stan is doing, I know they have a newer version out X-2 or something but I have no experience with it.

 

My improvised board for cn(18) is ready just waiting for a module. Maybe a couple days more and here is the screen shot from Cf-m34 using the usb gps receiver but installed internally, same type of installation probably i'm gonna do to my cf-28.

 

They upgraded the computers at school last semester.. To a newbie like me it didn't seem any different. I think it is just a service pack upgrade.. probably bugfixes and what not.

 

Well... I wasn't paying attention I guess... My order from DigiKey came in. It5 wasn't what I was expecting. I now have 25 Ribbon cable connectors instead of 25 ribbon cables! !@#%$!

I wanted/needed the ribbon cables! Anyone know where to scrounge that? I though I saw someone post a link but I can't find it now. I guess I'll try to return these to DigiKey. I looked on their site for the ribbon cable. I guess I'm not entering the correct keywords because they don't show it. I can't imagine they would sell the conectors and not the ribbon cable.

These little SMD connectors look too small to solder... By a long shot!

On a more pleasant note. I just soldered the MMCX connectors I got. I want to try out the antenna from GPS Online to see if it is close in reception to the JDG one. They aren't hard to solder if you have a small enough tip. Just make sure you have presoldered the center conductor. I didn't use the crimp connectors... I just soldered the braid to the outside and wrapped it with the included shrink wrap.

I'll try out the other antenna in a bit.

I just got parts in... I have to lay them out and stare at them for a while!

Anyway... If anyone knows a close source for the ribbon cable... Please let me know or post a link

 

Sh...ugar. Someone is going to need them anyway, I should need some in a few weeks, I have the power stage working ok now anyway.
Here is a link for the cable from a UK company, there is a link for the datasheet on the page so it should be possible to find a US supplier from the part numbers.
http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/br...Ntt=50+way+0.5mm+ribbon&Ntx=&_requestid=92107
It may be worth getting self-adhesive backing tape for where the ribbon goes into the connector at the same time. I would still be up for 5 lengths or meters if you get a roll.
cheers

EDIT. For soldering the connectors, putting the connector in place with a bit of powdered solder and flux paste under each pin and heating to around 260 deg C with eather a heat gun or hot plate works well. Sparkfun have some very good howto's on it.
Another method that a lot of folks report as working well is to solder along the length of the connector paying no attention to individual pins. When the whole thing is soldered go back along with de-soldering braid. Once the excess solder is removed the joints are usually well separated.

 

I'll slink off quietly, since it looks like I mistakenly got your hopes up initially.

Edit - use this search
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/us/dksus.dll?Cat=1638574;keywords=flat flex cable

although I don't think any have the right pitch

 

Well... I just ordered 10 of them. I didn't want to go too crazy as I don't want to blow a ton and then find out they don't work for whatever reason. I'm not sure how long they will take to get here. They will probably take that long, slow boat.....

 

No records match your search criteria

 

Exact same thing but different.
http://sg.farnell.com/jsp/shoppingCart/shoppingCart.jsp?action=add&_requestid=149277

Product In Stock is available from our Asia, UK or US warehouses.
Asia Warehouse - Same/Next Day Delivery
UK/US Warehouse - 2-4 Working Days Delivery
Stock will only be reserved once your order is submitted with any back order items also shown.

Jim

 

Caddy, link came up as an empty cart for me, could just be my browser though. Just in case:
http://sg.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=3352687
2.1 meter reel. I don't think I will be needing 10 meters of the stuff
Toughbook, I can't see it being worth ordering in bulk so I'll order a length from here if all goes well.
cheers

 

here is another link for ribbon ca. http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/CopartnerTech/FFC_cable/44928/0?fromSpotlight=1

 

Ok try this!
http://sg.farnell.com/jsp/Cable/Ribbon/MULTICOMP/FFC0.50A50/0202L4/displayProduct.jsp?sku=3352687

It’s available to us in the U.S.A. for $7.00 and you can have it in a couple of days.

 

CRAP! That is what I ordered... Except off of their UK site. I wonder if they will just ship it from the US. It showed being shipped via UPS.

I guess we'll see.

 

hello all been look around for sometime thought i would start asking some ?

Stan 1. have you statring on your new board/ if so where are you at?
2. can you get USB out of the rim board?

Rick your fingerprint scanners can you put them in the IrDA port?
thanks all
Kyle

 

We're not very far on the board right now. All of my work is on my dead desktop, and I didn't send my progress to anybody before it died.

We should have USB capabilities pretty fast though, which may be on the 1st revision board. The second revision board though will have more goodies, but it will be a while before I get prototyping work started.

Stan may have progress on his own design, and he did have some good work started already. No promises on when it'll get released though.

No clue about the finger print scanner, but that's a good idea.

 

Taking a break from swearing at the assembly language for turning a pcb layout file into cutter movements to write this Will have basic controls done before the new year, then have to make mountings to fit a wood router as dremels don't have the accuracy in the spindle bearings to cut 0,5mm pcb tracks (big surprise there, 0.2mm runout at the tool tip).
Still on schedule so should have a definite yes/no by the end of the first week in January.
For the USB on the RIM board, I don't have one but it will be possible to hack into the USB lines, how easy will depend on the track layouts though.
cheers

 

If your rim board has 50c ribbon ca. i say, yes! you can hack it right there. As i have the daughterboard which i think is the same as rim board, I already traces the usb terminal and the good news is that there is a tiny pin hole to each terminal and it is good sign to start.

 

So the question to stan is have you been able to get any device recognized and operable by tapping into the USB lines on the CF-28 CN40? Has anyone ?

 

I posted in the GPS thread... I received the ribbon cables from Farnell. They are a match but they are over twice as long. I guess that means that I can cut them at least in half if not into thirds to stretch my money. I had boodered up the end of a ribbon cable so I cut the factory end off. I had a drink of Jack and sat there thinking about how to put the factory finish/end back on it. I ended up puting it into my vise and letting about 3/16" stick out above it. I started running a little 800 grit sandpaper over it to expose the wires inside. It worked well but still had some plastic on it. I used one of my "Magic" solvents to take off the rest of the plastic. I used a little tape to build back up the "factory edge" so the connector would bite it to make the contacts... And it worked! It didn't look like it was factory but it works just as well as the factory end!

By the way... The fingerprint scanners are a little too long to work in the irda location. If someone seriously wants to try to mod it I will send one to them. The FIRST thing they should do is to see if they will even work. In reading some eye wash on the Internet about them... I've seen it written that they only work with 2 of Dell's laptops. I haven't had the time to try it on anything else. Before digging away in the guts of the CF-28... I'd try to see if it even works by plugging it in the USB. The first person to PM me gets one... BUT... You MUST write a tutorial about the installation if it works.

 

Toughbook, nice to know the cables are 100%.
I was wondering about using a fine belt in a belt sander with the cable on something flat to skin the contacts, not tried it though. I was thinking that would be something like the method used in production but they look more like they are heated somehow.
tough-2-go, cn18. cn40 doesn't have much of interest... for now A few folks have various things working with the internal USB, I have bluetooth and wifi and ohlip has gps on a cf-m34 and cf-28 (in progress, probably finished by now). There are a few others dotted around the net but none of them go into much detail.
cheers

 

RumGod gets the fingerprint scanner...

 

Toughbook.. do you have a picture of that fingerprint sacanner? Thanks

ohlip

 

You can see what it looks like here... The problem is that the pc board takes up almost the whole length of the case. So you have to have that length inside the laptop.

 

Thanks! its almost brand new, i guess. As i have seen on ebay its way diff. the old one but that one is the latest in tech that mostly notebook used.

I will pm you, maybe i can score one.

ohlip

 

Just for the head up. I am running out of budget. I needed to sold one of my unit. Hey! Toughbook, i can't offer you the unit coz those unit is not a touchscreen. Just waiting for my purchased usb gps receiver may a couple more days and I am done. I just post the pic. of the progress in a separate thread for reference.

ohlip

 

A couple of comments to throw into the mix here for responses - from someone who is not too experienced in the soldering aspects of the process:

1. I read Toughbook's use of a shortened flat flex cable to bridge the mb and daughter board. A search brought up another camera hack using a similar 3 way cable.
[ http://www.whitetailsupply.com/PDF-Files/Flat_Flex_Cable.pdf ]
That process involved soaking the cable in acetone to soften the insulation, then scraping with a flat surface (a butter knife). Using a 30way, .5 mm pitch for testing, and the back of a pocket knife blade as the hard flat scraper, I was able to uncover the wires on one side of the cable, then found they were loose enough on the other side to carefully lift them up and separate them (tho it might be better to uncover only one side and then cut in between with a hobby knife). I can then alternate the even and odd wires. I am trying to see if I can solder the flat wires to 30 gauge or slightly bigger wire to see if I can break out the connector that way to a board of some type to fit under the battery. Testing my soldering skills (or lack thereof) is a next step. Does this sound feasible?

2. The wire and connector pitch is .5mm. Assuming you can find a wire gauge where the wire and insulation thickness matches (28- or 30- gauge?), does it sound feasible to wrap the wire around an object to make a connector? I visualize something like wrapping to get about 104 wires to the inch ( basically the width of the connector, with wire space to each side), then removing every other wire after embedding or fixing the wires some way (epoxy or glue). From what I have measured (found a 52-pin IC which matched the 50 wire cable pitch, and measured the same width as the cable) this should get about the same spacing as the hi-rose connector to then connect the cable end to some way. You would end up with the correct pitch at one end, and wires you could more fully separate on the other.

I know this is Rube-Goldberg-esque, and anyone who knows what they are doing probably wouldn't look at this twice, but I wanted to see what kind of feedback this might generate.

Thanks for taking the time to read this far.

 

Hiya. Cheers for the link, nice to know the solvents work to get the damn insulation off Did the same as you are proposing and it worked very well, getting the insulation off was the hardest part though.
To get usefull connections I used a piece of stripboard (2.54mm pitch) with 4 rows of 13 pin sockets. Any kind of pin or socket would work, I happened to have those at hand.
From there it was the same as you suggest, odd wires forward and even back, get them well insulated and do the same again on the 2 groups to end up with 4 rows of 12 and 13 wires.
Looks tricky at first but once the wires are on a bit of tape its easy to space them out evenly and end up with (close enough to) 2.54mm spacing. Then all that needed to be done was solder them row by row on to the block of pins using a bit of tape between each row in case of sharp edges.
Looking back over that it doesn't make a lot of sense I put some photo's in the files section of the yahoo toughbooks group, if your not already a member its well worth signing up as there is a lot of very usefull info and the search seems quite good as most of the threads are short and to the point. Started this thread here to help keep it that way
cheers

 

Hiya, stan - actually I was on toughbook.groups before finding this, and I think you started your port breakout there before bringing it here - just used a shorter version of the id here.

I had looked at your pictures when you first posted them I think, but it makes a lot more sense now after 2 months of following this and the GPS thread.

I'm not sure how well the softening of the insulation worked - I used my wife's nail polish remover, and it may not have been as strong as the pure acetone. I actually used a little sand paper to rough the surface of the insulation on one side and it seemed to go better after that.

Definitely looks better and is probably easier to strip a longer length of the cable to be able to feed the wires through the strip board than try to solder to the wires first. Separates them out better and would appear to give better control. Glad I didn't use the 50 way cable initially. There also seems to be a .5mm cable with solder pads on the wires at one end, but I'm not sure if I've found a source for a 50-way version.

I had thought about splitting the wires to 4 groups like you, to make soldering easier, but was hung up on coming back to a 1x50 row of pins. It does make more sense to go to four rows instead, or even split the pins up to areas for connections depending on the use ( like the USB wires to a separate area). Like in 'Wrath of Khan', stop thinking in 2d, visual 3d (or 4d) instead.

Keep up the good work.

 

FYI - to bring this back to the top. Don't know if anyone else is still trying to do something with the CN18 with out the daughter board as far as getting the available USB there.

Requested/received 2 samples of the 50-way/.5mm pitch ribbon connector ( the latch part that solders to the mobo and daughter board) to see how that could be used. Thought I might be able to brake out from the pins, rather than try what stan did ( I tried but was going cross-eyed trying to see the wires, and the separation from the ribbon plastic didn't go well). That doesn;t seem feasible either, as the pins would probably snap free from the plastic if they are bent in any way to try to get a little more separation.
There are slots in the connector, that end up under the ribbon that are continuations of the channels the wire runs in. The size matches 30-gauge wire, so I am using an adhesive and laying several wires in to match USB+ and USB-, 5v, and gnd, and will then run those to a USB hub and see if it continues to work, or if the smoke leaks out of my test 28. I hope that the flat wire on the ribbon is able to make contact with the 30-gauge wire that is in the channels when the latch is down on the ribbon and get a signal through. All of this is on a small PCB board for a little bit of support.
Hope to have more USB ports, or a new boat anchor, soon...

 

I'm still slowly working on the board project, but still slow in progress.

I do however have a couple of test 50-pin connectors for the project thanks to Toughbook, so if all goes to plan I'll have a board on order by the end of the month to prototype.

The first revision will have USB.

 

Surprised that this thread has slipped so far back (but then I've gotten stuck in my USB project)...

Trolling in Google I came across this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sierra-Wireless...QcategoryZ45001QQcmdZViewItem#ShippingPayment

but have not found any other information about the card as to whether it is USB2.0 only, if it will work as a general mini-pcie upgrade path, or much of anything else.

Any one have any thoughts?

 

fascinating.. but i'm not sure what we would do with it!

 

I was wondering if a connector could run from the USB lines from CN18 to the USB of this module, and provice mini-PCI Express capability for the CF28s?

Hmmmm?

 

I would imagine that is USB 2.0. We would probably need to route it through a PCMCIA USB 2 card, then to a hub on a future revision of the aftermarket GPS card, then to that... but the only thing it would really do any better is offer more wireless card options (N needs mini-PCIe).