~Toughbooktalk~

Hi everyone I have just purchased a CF-18 Mk2 and I needed a com port ! but it didn't have one, so i purchased a power pcb with the com port on it and plugged it in but windows doesn't find it ??? also cannot find anything in the bios so I'm a bit confused....

Can anyone help me please

Toughshmee wrote:Hi everyone I have just purchased a CF-18 Mk2 and I needed a com port ! but it didn't have one, so i purchased a power pcb with the com port on it and plugged it in but windows doesn't find it ??? also cannot find anything in the bios so I'm a bit confused....

Can anyone help me please

Some of the guys will be by to advise,I will tell you that you will be much better off getting a CF-19mk1 or 2 from ebay,mk1's are dirt cheap and will run circles around that 18,4gb of ram and a ssd is the way to go.

Not sure what board you are talking about. Can you post a link or photo?

Please give us the full model number, like CF-18xxxxxxx

Possible it's a digitizer model, believe those didn't have a com port.

Hi
I've done something similar, the PCB that has the DC Barrel jack and VGA port on my CF-18 noticeably had pads for a serial port, using spare parts from another dead cf-18 that had the serial port populated I installed it, both boards appear to be identical in footprint. and sadly no luck, I think this is because the Bios needs to be told that that com port is available and can be presented. I might be completely wrong in this, just a guess.

perhaps a nodded bios based of one of the models with the port included, in fact I have the old mobo, I could attempt to dump the bios if I extract the chip and use an Arduino? or some form of USB device?

Are you sure that the daughter board is installed properly? Is the ribbon cable seated into the connector on the system board properly? Is the cable orientated properly and not upside down? If the board is installed correctly, the device should show in the BIOS. I never heard of a serial port needing the BIOS flashed to enable the port.

yea I have checked the ribbon cable, sadly no change.

The original PCB is only missing the port itself which is a passive component, hence why I was thinking it would need to be pointed at somewhere in the software passably at a bios level. might just be a registry issue in windows that needs to be manually changed, such as enabling the port that is default disabled

Thinking about this some more, if your unit had digital touch originally, then you will have to flask the BIOS with one from a analog touch. Phoenix does not have tools, like AMI, that allows you to d/l a BIOS image from a unit, change/mod the image and re-flash the Bios with the modded image.

If i remember right when they made a digitizer model they deleted the external serial port because that was used internally for the digitizer pen. And I think it can't be modded back in. I know we had a thread on it over at NBR but here is a archive link to see if you can find something on it. Will have to search the page with CTRL F. to search the page.

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/panasonic.1012/

Doing a quick search I did find this one thread on it, but I know there are more that go into more details.

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/panasonic. ... al%20port/

Awesome, I will have a look into this, I think my unit used the digitiser but when I replaced the screen I installed the PCB type one.

TY