Just Bought my first Toughbook

[u/Eskei46]

I'm a tech at a local Nissan dealership (at work we have the fz-55 which i absolutely love) so i had to buy one for myself (mainly ecu tuning for my Nissan S13).
I got on ebay a CF-54 MK1, dual battery with a locked bios (i hope i can manage to unlock it), 1080p and 16GB of Ram for dirt cheap.
I have the model number and while i wait for it i was wondering if i can figure out if it's the touch model, from the model number.

thanks in advance

[u/Born_in_67]

If there is a sticker on the bottom of the unit that starts off “CF-54XXXXXXXX” - all of the X’s are the accessories the unit was originally built with. There are decoders online that tell you what each letter in that number mean.

For example (this is not the decoder - just an example) CF-54ALMM14Q CF-54 - Model number A - Mark 1 - I5-7800 CPU L - 256 MB SSD M - 8 GB RAM M - Fingerprint Reader 1 - 1000 NIT Screen 4 - Touchscreen Q - Illuminated Keyboard

BIOS lock is not a big deal as long as you can live with the configuration. From past experience it is all but impossible to remove it without a password.

Welcome to the Toughbook family!

[u/Eskei46 → u/Born_in_67]

Thanks for the reply!
The number (from the item's description) is CF-54AY046TG

For the bios password i read about jumping something underneath a RAM to reset it, i hope that does the trick for me

[u/Safjist_Nipnog]

I have used a program before called a “blaster” program that floods the BIOS but have only used it on CF-30 mk1/2 and CF-19 Mk1/2 with success. Just haven’t tried it with a newer unit. But with each newer generation they have make improvements with bios password retention.

It was mixed when I didn’t. One time I didn’t take the bios battery out the next time I did. Just to see what worked best.

[u/Safjist_Nipnog]

Older models yes, newer models have it saved in a chip. You can’t bypass it like that anymore.

[u/JustARandomEskere → u/Safjist_Nipnog]

I read that for some work on the cf54

[u/Safjist_Nipnog]

These are from old threads on toughbooktalk where I posted before under the name ADOR

I just used this on one of the CF-19 Mk1's I got off ebay with locked out bios. I now have full access to the bios on this unit. Going to try the other one it is a Mk1 as well.

I used the BIOS320.exe program. And did the blaster attack. I am not sure what did it as there are more than one attack and I tried more than one. More than once.

When I booted last to the bios I got "checksum error, using default" So it loaded default settings. So this should work on Mk1 and M2 toughbooks before they swapped to AMI bios. Looks like I won't have to do any hard core stuff to get it unlocked. I had this one program saved with a bunch of other stuff to try out too but since Springfield said it was on the pc he got back I figured I would play with it first.

I ran the program at least once or twice before with no luck, then on the 4th time of running different combos of password blaster it worked.

EDIT: (Ran into a small problem, after updating the bios and rebooting it gave the "checksum error, using default" again. while the unit was running I unplugged the bios battery, saved, restarted booted with out error, plugged battery back in and saved, no more problem so far.)

EDIT:

After being off for a few minutes the bad checksum error pops up again when booting, think it may of killed the bios battery?

EDIT: Since this is a Mk1 I think later today I will try re-flashing the bios and see if that fixes the checksum.

[u/Safjist_Nipnog]

Ok, day 2. On the second CF-19 Mk1 with bios password and got it removed after a couple of tries. I don't think I had let the program run long enough. After about the 3rd try I ran Blaster 1 and let it run till the white screen popped up. After that the checksum error popped up and no more password.

I let the first CF-19 Mk1 set over night with no hard drive or battery and everything on it seems good now. I am not sure but the OS may of had something to do with it. The windows 7 iso I was using I use for testing and it has been severely cut down with V-lite. It also has crash protection that is modded in that restarts where you left off on last program run and folders/files open. Thinking it was running the blaster again on start up of the OS. I have the XP hard drive in there right now and have had no problems so far. On the second one it never gave me the error a second time so far as I haven't put the windows 7 drive back into it.