Panasonic CF-18 ToughBook

VanillaCoffee

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I got a Panasonic CF-18 ToughBook in good condition with very good battery life. Here are the specs:

1.6 GHz CPU
512 MB RAM
160GB HDD
GPS
OS Windows XP
MS-Office 2007

Its loaded with some interesting software probably quite valuable so I want to clone the HDD before I do anything with it. I also want to upgrade the RAM. From my current research the CF-18 is very fussy when it comes to RAM. The MAX RAM is said to be 1.5GB. It has 512MB RAM built in to the system board with one empty RAM slot for a 1GB DDR2 Samsung PC2 5300S-555 Memory module. I was wondering if this could perhaps take a 2GB Memory module of similar type bringing the total RAM to 2.5GB?

Has anybody tried this or does anybody know if this would work?
 


It will only work with a 1gb pc2-5300
It only has a slow 32 bit processor
on the good side it is probably one of the most rugged machines you will ever find, originally designed and built for military use
 
originally designed and built for military use

I doubt it is still true, but there was a time when they didn't sell them to regular civilians. They sold only to government agencies, including police and EMTs. I should probably look to see if that's still true, but I'm not actually in the market for one.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about putting a 2GB ram stick in it, 1GB will suffice, as this machine will run slowly anyway.

If you want to use it on the internet, I advise giving it at least 2GB swap, (but it will still be slow owing to the processor speed), it's what I did with such slow processor machines.

(Originally marketed to military, but mainly used in industry.)
 
I own a few ToughBooks I have two CF-28's CF-19 CF-30 CF-31 and the CF-18. I understand these aren't built to be the fastest laptops but there well built. I do love these ToughBooks but I always like to MAX them out with RAM.

1.5GB of RAM is fine for the CF-18 I think I will just leave it on its original Windows XP operating system besides it has lots of useful software on it and sometimes slow is good. I'll use this for programming Motorola and Tait Transceivers as my old IBM laptop packed up that I used to use for my HAM Radio hobby so this CF-18 is perfect for that. I wont need to connect this to the internet.
 

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