The OFFICIAL Panasonic CF-29 Toughbook Thread!

[Toughbook]

I thought I'd start a CF-29 thread. I also wanted to post the Service Manual for model that is close to mine. It should work for 99% of CF-29s but for some reason the CD I got has pretty much every variant in there.

Since the price of CF-29s is droping rapidly I imagine that more people will start buying them. I paid $850 for my CF-29ETKGDKM. I got it from Hitech Assets on ebay for $850 and it came with a DVD Rom! I cannot stress enough what great guys they are. (No connections there... Just a happy camper.) Mine came looking pretty much brand new with only light wear on the Touchscreen protector. I've already spiffed it up with a 7200rpm, 100GB hard drive and a Bluetooth PCMCIA card. Since there is no internal slot on the 29 I used one of the side slots. Using the Billionton Bluetooth card with the moveable antenna... It fits right in and you can close the door and STILL get a signal if you are within 20-30 feet! I want to add GPS and maybe an external SMA antenna jack. Since mine came with the CDMA it has the antenna connector in the back just like the 28 does when equipped with the RIM board. It looks like there may be enough space on the 29 to take that out and put in a SMA bulkhead connector. There is not enough room to do a proper job on the 28. (and leave you enough threads to make sure you can connect with ANY antenna.) On the 28 you can't slide the door closed if it is installed correctly. It looks like the 29 has a little more room in there so I may try it. I almost don't want to mess with the wireless as the existing setup is pretty darn good. It even gives the 600mW cards a run for their money!


Link to Service Manual


Use this thread for anything related to the CF-29... Problems, answers, mods, hints, tips, tricks, hacks or whatever else you can think of. Of course if you need quick answers you should start another thread with your own topic.

So... Have FUN and Post Away!

[stiffnecked]

Thanks. I appreciate the link. I'll hook it up and do the Service Pack 2 updates after I get back from the doctors office this morning. So far I like this thing. It just has a whole different feel to it versus the 28...

[gravitar]

Since there is no internal slot on the 29 I used one of the side slots.

What? Nothing? no mini PCI? no PCMCIA? no multi-purpose option board? wow.. That's going to be hard to get used to after using 28s!

[Toughbook]

I've only had it for 3 days.... Give me time.... give me time....

[pappy42]

I've only had it for 3 days.... Give me time.... give me time....

TB,
As you know, I'm waiting on a 1gig DDR, 333, PC2700 memory chip from newegg at the present time. I'll post a report when I receive that.

For what it's worth, my interests are CDMA, internal GPS, BT (I'll take a look at the Billionth PCMCIA card) and a "how to" post with photos for the hard drive change out like the one posted for the CF-28.

[Toughbook]

The hard drive was easy enough to change out. It is a little more complicated as there were a lot more taped areas. But there is really only one way to put it all back together. My thought is that you should take a picture of it with a digital camera so you remember how it all went together. Maybe when I have the time I can put one together. The Manual (above) will help a little too!

[Toughbook]

Okay... I took the bottom off to take a gander at what we have... Here's a shot of the laptop with the bottom removed.




My first thought was that there is not near the room inside when compared to the CF-28. The shot above is with all the components taken out. (Battery, hard drive, floppy, etc.) It appears that the Sprint CDMA assembly slides in the side just above the battery.




I'm assuming that this is where the other options would go as well. (GPS, Bluetooth, etc.) Here's a shot of the slide assembly... The top...



And the bottom... (I guess depending on how you are looking at it!)



I suppose this is a good news/bad news type thing. The bad news is that there is limited space. The other bad news is that there are A LOT of connectors with HAIR THIN wires that feed into the connectors. It looks like it would be VERY easy to pull the wires out of their connectors if they were pulled the wrong way. The other bad news that I already touched on... Lack of space.

Now... The good news. The wires are already run up to the antenna so I would imagine they could be disconnected and used for a GPS antenna. Where the CF-28 is easy to split and is faily easy to work on... This one looks like it would definitely take patience and knowledge to do just about any mod to it. Did I mention that space is at a premium in here?

So... I am either going to have to have a 2nd CF-29 to play around with so if I mess it up I can still use my other one or it will just happen one night... I'm in my shop... I'm drinking Jack... And the rest you can figure out.

[Toughbook]

Oh... And the other thing I did was to put a little dab of Artic Silver paste on the heatsinks. I'll run SpyBot now and see what the temps get up to.

[stiffnecked]

Well, I was just going to ask a question but your pictures answered them. I loaded Service Pack 2, successful and then tried to load the driver for the ProWireless card(or whatever it's called) from the panny website. Looked like it was going to load and then up popped a message that said it was NOT supported.

I thought about going back down to High Tech but it's snowing like crazy. I'll pull the back and first make sure the card is in there. Some work has already been done on the 29 as it has a 60 gig hard drive with a sticker from Heartlandsi with a date of 08-06.

[Toughbook]

It looks like the Arctic Silver cooled it down by 2 degrees F so far.