Just got my first Toughbook! Specs: CF-54, 500GB SSD, 16GB ram, 4G. Came with one regular battery pack and one that's shaped like a DVD drive. I do have one question. Can I just throw any CF-54 DVD drive in it or does it have to be a MK3? Not sure if there is a difference there. I'm happy to answer any questions!

Hey guys, I work at an e-waste facility and we recently got in a mk. 4 FZ-G1 Toughpad that won't register any m.2 that's put in it. No drive shows up when trying to boot the tablet off of a windows 11 flash drive. The original m.2 was pulled when the tablet was retired from police use. Is there a trick for getting it to work?

I finally won an auction for one of these just a few minutes ago and not real sure what I am doing. I haven't even picked it up yet but I understand they remove the hard drive and caddy. I need to buy a charger and a hard drive and caddy. I'm NOT very tech savvy but really wanted one of these to hopefully put a T-Mobile data SIM in and use it on road trips for the wife and kids. I hope I can use a T-Mobile SIM anyway.

So, being computer dumb, what HD should I use and can I upgrade the memory at all? I am going to Google stuff all day trying to learn.

Edit: I have NO idea if this is a MK1 or MK2?

I received five decommissioned Government Panasonic CF-29s without hard drives, charging cables, or caddy's so I'm gonna slowly work on them. This one is my first test subject 😸

I have scoured ebay and google but cant find a decent extended battery cover for the cf33. I have found batteries from a few sources but no cover. Does anyone have a direction to point me? Not looking to spend $200 on one but around 50 would be ok.

This will only run some Toyota Techstream software (display live values via USB dongle) and does not need to be powerful.
What models fit the bill and may be found cheap-ish on Ebay?
Where can I buy genuine new batteries for these?

Trying to find drivers is a pain for it but does it need the specific pen for it? It's supposed to be Wacom but a Wacom Pen won't work at all.

Google search tells me that I need the Blu-ray drive to have a PATA/IDE/EIDE connection. Is there anything else I need it to have? I know toughbooks have caddies/special cases around some parts, so I don't know if I need a very specific Blu-ray drive, or if any PATA/IDE/EIDE drive can fit in the caddie.

1x Toughpad FZ-G1 MK1 without Mainboard 2x Toughpad FZ-G1 MK5 with broken Displays and BIOS password.

Specs:

CPU: Intel Pentium M Processor 1.2GHz

RAM: 1.5GB

So I'm booting from a USB flash drive as I don't have a HDD available atm. I'm attempting to boot Xubuntu Linux and have put the flash drive in boot priority #1 in BIOS. I am using Rufus to format the USB using a .iso file and the following settings:

Once I boot the computer, it goes to a black screen with a repeatedly flashing "_" at the top left of the screen. Nothing happens at this point. What could be going wrong here? Thanks!

Hi folks, I'm a fan of the refurbished Toughbooks ever since Lenovo started it's decline about 10 years ago.

I own cf19mk3(2008), t420(2012), cf19mk6(2013) and just ordered a cf54mk2 (2017) to replace them all.

I just wanted to say how happy I am that Panasonic got it's head together and re-introduced real toughbooks with the FZ-40, which looks like a FZ-55 had a child with a CF-19 ... especially after wasting all our time with the CF-20 and CF-33 detachables.

I can't wait to get a refurbished FZ-40 in three or four years, will make due with a CF-54mk2 untill then.

FYI: Passmark 8.0 between cf-19 mk3 (2009), cf-19 mk6 (2012), x230t (2013), cf-54 mk2 (2017)

https://imgur.com/a/pRxjkZm

The cf54mk2 has about the same performance as a 4 year older x230t thinkpad ... only exception is 2x better 3d graphics performance.

The CF-54 mk2 is about 4 to 5 times faster than a 8 year older CF-19 mk3.

Could be useful to some: https://mhhauto.com/Thread-Toughbook-Hacker-v1. It seems to be done quite easily on many models. Was researching BIOS update when I chanced upon this. Use at your own risk. Very useful when purchasing custom BIOS second-hand computers as those often have key functions that are disabled, including WiFi in some cases. Imagine getting a nice Toughbook on the cheap because the WiFi is disabled and easily reactivating it!