today i picked up some laptops from guv auction. 19 cf-30, one cf-27 and a tough tablet. i all ready had three cf-30 and put in hard drives, memory and linux mint cinnamon. they are heavy. about 12$ ea this batch. the hard drive has a propritary caddy so the drive can be easly removed. somehow they wind up on ebay for 85$ ea. a cable is avail. for about 10. or was. i made a foam and metal tape caddy with the cable and it worked great. i have 2 linux gps programs but not smart enough to install them and make it work. yet. there is a long list of built ins like the gps antena. should work as a gps. pikka approves.
Ah! The old Tough Book. By the time we would get them they were already so outdated that they could barely run the necessary software but held up well. I am interested to know if you can update them with more RAM and bigger, faster SSD? I imagine that is about all you could do with them if even that is possible.
8gb ram max and a ssd is faster. yeah thats about all you can do. 30 second boot time. basic comp stuff,,email, surf,,, prob not going to slice 3d files with it. mint seems pretty stable. might squeeze some more out with puppy.the gps is what id like most. truck/van laptop. obd 2 codes are on the list too.
Yeah, they would make a nice portable communication laptop for digital mode comms, programming radios, etc. I'd loved to get my hands on one. I will have to start looking around.
It's no wonder "how", it's because of people like me who have been telling people about these laptops for decades. If you needed a computer to survive TSHTF a Toughbook is pretty much it. Back in the day, we used to make YouTube videos from 2006 through 2015 or so and then the market dried up. Every now and then you see a batch come through and the prices drop. The demand is still pretty high and you can get top Dollar for those if they are "certified" with an OS, fully functional. And those like myself know a scam so all it takes is one to ruin a seller for good. The way I configure these is to install Puppy Linux and a SSD. It's slow, but it works well for a place to store all your learning E-Books and maps. Anyway, if you ever come across a DRMO batch of Nextel phones (iDen) I would grab them up, too.
,,uh. i took a mem chip out of one and all i saw was "kingston" & numbers , im not sure. 2 mem chips one said 2 gb. 4gb might be max. i might be wrong about 8gb max.
so quick look over of the cf-30 is 7 good, 5 ok, 7 bad screen?. couldnt find just the cable for hard drive /caddy but ebay has caddys w cable and heater for 18$ so thats prob best deal. they all have batterys so after i charge them i can take the drive caddy out of one that runs and do a better check on screen quality, ram, stats. not sure what all the velcro is but they all have it. caddy, ssd, charger should get 12 going.60$ea? so il have about 75 ea in this batch. last 3 cost me 200 ea. vga video out, att chipped com cards(expired?) had "vista" linux mint cinnamon runs good on them. i have not tried puppy. steam punk laptops.
the sat phones were around xmass. is it pbx? phone system a few weeks ago. i simply dont have that many folks to talk to!
i started ordering ssd,drive caddys and chargers for the cf-30 toughbooks. i asked and i can list them in the buyer beware sales page here but i thought id ask about intrest in these. not sure how to do the money. anyway how many monkeys are intrested in the tonka truck of laptops? they are all mk1 cf-30 toughbooks with 4gb ddr ram and stock batterys. one has 53k hrs! dvd player, built in gps, lots of stuff. they had vista but i have been running a old mint linux on mine. if you had 2 caddys you could swap drives and have xp or vista on one and mint, ubuntu ect on the other. so win xp era software. im not a windows guy but it would prob be easyier to find xp/vista software then linux.i dunno. for example foxtrot gps and viking gps are linux comaptable gps mapping software that should make it a stand alone gps, without internet. i have them,,,, but not smart enough to intall them and make it work.but they exist. while they have touchscreen it is stylus touch screen xp era,,,, prob not going to get todays touch performance on them. il prob sell 15 of them 50 to 200 depending on condition. the hard drive caddy is propritary and the cable is 17$,, caddy with cable is 18$ last three i did caddys were 85$ anyway how many monkeys intrested? with caddy, ssd w linux and charger, or laptop no caddy, charger, ssd. (get your own.) i can show each bios with hrs, mem data and will test them with linux to look at screen, run programs.
@kissmybrass , i might be interested, wouldn't hurt to have another LT around. Send me a pm with pricing and I'm sure we can work something out.
