New member of the Toughbook club

[Barney]

Hello all,

Just bought my first Toughbook (in Australia)

Took a bit of a chance, it's a CF-18 came with nothing except the machine and a blue tab batterry, , no power supply, no hard drive or caddy, no disks, but it is in VERY good physical condition and it was cheap ($100)!
(I got a receipt and a record of the guys driving license).

The model is CF-18DHA37KA

I'm getting a power supply ready (it's a universal with the correct voltage output).

I want to take it slowly while I try to breathe life into it, so I'm not ordering Ram, Caddy (got a 60gb IDE drive) and disks until I know that it's not a doorstop.

I've done a bit of searching on the interweb, but I can't decode the model number.

I think it's got:

CMDA modem (The associated buttons are on the LHS)

GPS (it has the enlarged cover)

Touchscreen (it has a serial port)

512 ram (there's a 256 card under the speaker (the cover for which was a bit dented, that's why I took it off)

Can anyone give me a full breakdown of the spec based on the model number please.

I haven't even been able to power it up yet to get it to post, (will it post without a hard drive installed??).

[Springfield]

Welcome!

It will boot without a hard drive, press F2 to see the BIOS screens. The "37" means it's a customized private configuration. Sometimes these have BIOS problems e.g wifi locked out, but hopefully yours will not.

[Barney]

OK, got a working power supply.

Upon plugging it in the Orange battery light comes on (it's just gone green).

Switching the power switch the green power light comes on, and the LCD brightless icon lights up, but nothing else happens, no display, I've tried increasing the Brightness but no response.

I don't have access to an external display here, I'll try that later.

Any ideas?? (maybe it's a doorstop!!)

[ADOR]

The orange light means it's charging, swapping to green is normal. Sounds like you still have a good battery.

Two things to try. One shine a light on the screen to see if anything is on the screen. May be a bad backlight if you see anything on the screen.

Two, if nothing is on the screen, it gives no beeps. Flip the unit over and pull the bottom to give a look on the inside. I have got three CF-18's that were non-booting working by pulling the motherboard completely out, including unhooking the bios battery and waiting a few minutes and reinstalling them. Just make sure everything is reseated good and you don't loose/tear the thermal pads.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1146

There is our CF-18 guide.

Now even if it turns out dead don't give up hope. I have seen them popping up for sale alot but stripped out. Off of your doors, screen sides and keyboard will work on all CF-18's and some CF-19's. So you may find one later on that has been stripped and needs those parts.

I don't seem to have the country A the last number of your model number listed. Do you know any history of where the unit came from? Perhaps A = Australia, could be another one we could add to the list. As far as the 37 code goes some of that is explained in the guide. Are there any sticker on the unit that denote it came from a company?

[Barney]

Thanks for the quick reply guys, nice to know that there are knowledgeable helpful people still around!!!

Had a look in a fairly well lit room, angled the screen etc, I can't see any image at all on the screen, so it doesn't look like a backlight issue (unfortunately, I'll try an external monitor tonight, in case it's a display fault)

I'll try re-seating the motherboard and pulling the bios battery as suggested.

I think that the unit may be ex Telstra (Australian Phone company, they're big enough to be able to generate a special order/config code) from digging on the net, there were a couple of places on the unit where stickers had been removed, but there is nothing left to identify it.

I did find the exact model number listed on a Panasonic 'Supplementary Instructions for CDMA' doc but it only refers to the modem and the headset (I have a separate headset jack)

I contacted Panasonics' Toughbook representative in Australia with the serial number by email, we'll see if they can shed some light on what I have.

[Springfield]

A bad memory stick will keep it from booting up.

[Barney]

Thanks, I'll try that too.

Am I missing a cover from underneath, everything seems to be so well sealed yet I have 4 open holes underneath near the port replicator port.

[ADOR]

It's not just you, everyone with a 18 has that, lol. The rubber seal for the bottom goes around that so it still seals the motherboard off.

I have seen a few but never got my hands on on WWAN model with voice. All CF-18's have the place for it covered with a sticker as most of the WWAN daughter boards are not set up to plug in with voice directly.

Check your basics and un-plug the ram, wireless cards, battery, etc. To make sure they aren't causing a problem.

If you have a good flash light try the boot up and light again. Sometime you just can't see it. But if the screen is lighting up and just blank you aren't getting a signal to the screen.

[Barney]

It was a bad ram stick, thanks guys!!! Ram out, booted straight away

Now I can't get into the bios because a password is set, (I did ask the clown who I bought it off the specific question whether there was one set, he said no)

Still it's an easy fix and I know that it's not dead.

I'll get myself an SSD then the fun begins installing the drivers (unless I can get a restore disk shipped to Australia).

Thanks again, I'm feeling pretty pleased about the progress

[toughasnails]

You should feel good...$100.00 for a CF-18 in Australia. You stole it