Panasonic CF-25 BIOS Modernization?

[kishy]

Hi all, first post...

First let me say that in my quests for BIOS upgrades over the years I continually find myself on this website, and be it for a download or just information I've yet to be disappointed...cheers for the good work

I come to you with a couple of Pentium 1 laptops which have an extremely crippled CMOS setup and difficult, incooperative BIOS (rather poor resource assignment, low hard drive size limit and so forth). These laptops appear to use a modified IBM BIOS based on a very IBM-like POST screen, IBM copyrights and a distinctly 1990s IBM CMOS setup (missing about 90% of the options normally present in an IBM CMOS setup, though).

I'm wondering if anyone here has the time, knowledge and willingness to either:

a) examine existing BIOS (note there are 3 major generations of the CF-25, I only have Mark 3s) and find a way to fix the problems, open up more options, etc.

or

b) adapt one of the more "generic" sorts (say, Award or AMI?) to the machine.

I don't know the first thing about how to make the necessary changes but it is my suspicion that this is certainly possible and probably not terribly difficult for someone who knows their way around BIOS modifications.

Although only a small group would benefit from such changes, it is definitely more than just myself, so I'm not on an entirely selfish quest here.

Thanks!

[edwin]

what bios revision are you running? you have got all the stuff from the panasonic support section for these?

you do realize that many of the option avaible nowadays did not even exist back then just because the hardware was very limited?
aside from that, these are ruggidized industrial notebooks, avaible with a known and proved range of options, there's no need for anything fancy stuff there...
these are workhorses and look and feel like that.

[kishy]

what bios revision are you running? you have got all the stuff from the panasonic support section for these?

you do realize that many of the option avaible nowadays did not even exist back then just because the hardware was very limited?
aside from that, these are ruggidized industrial notebooks, avaible with a known and proved range of options, there's no need for anything fancy stuff there...
these are workhorses and look and feel like that.

Hi there, thanks for the response.

1.00-L18 on one unit,
1.10-L14A on the other

I have the support materials but as far as I'm aware, the shortcomings of the machines are not fixed by any update that was officially released. CD booting was addressed with one update but as I have no CD drive, that's not particularly useful.

While I realize the hardware was limited, we're talking about 1997 here, not even 94-95. It seems unlikely that it could possibly be as crippled as the CMOS setup options would suggest.

The biggest problem: the specifications for the units suggest (well, explicitly state) they have compatibility with Cardbus (aka 32 bit PCMCIA) cards, yet 32 bit cards fail to be assigned resources, apparently by the BIOS (just repeating what others have said, and what Windows 98 tells me when I connect such hardware).

A larger hard drive capacity would be a nice fix as well, since it's got the 8.4GB limitation. There are workarounds, but none as elegant as it simply working with the full capacity of a larger drive (say, 20GB, as these are easier to find and often even cheaper than lower capacity, because a 4GB hard drive can be sold as "vintage" if the seller feels inclined to abuse the term, but a 20GB drive is just "obsolete" and "useless")

Photographic tour:






...and that's it. I apologize for the bad last pic, it's readable though.

No mention of dictating what resources PCMCIA can have...no mention of PCMCIA at all. No hard drive anything.

Other computers (laptops and otherwise) in 1997 offered much greater flexibility than this. Surely this isn't a hardware limitation?

Cheers

[edwin]

hmmm, that looks like the average laptop options on any OEM laptop back in those days. Get your average Compaq, Toshiba or Packard Bell and you won't find that much more.

but like I said, the things you want to adjust are there, Panasonic had a list of options that you can use, anything outside the list is simply unsupported. This to avoid any issue that may rise when using no-name accessories like unbranded el cheapo pcmcia-cards that may not entirely follow the standards and whatnot.

CardBus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card

CardBus are PCMCIA 5.0 or later (JEIDA 4.2 or later) 32-bit PCMCIA devices, introduced in 1995 and present in laptops from late 1997 onward.

I have a gut feeling this one has just missed the release by a few months...

[kishy]

Ack, sorry. Posted the full images rather than thumbnails. Edited but edit needs to be approved.

Kind of an unfortunate fact about the PCMCIA stuff then. Is it possible the manuals are all wrong then? Perhaps written expecting the computers to comply with spec but then the spec wasn't ready in time?

They definitely state compatibility with 32 bit CardBus cards...but no such card actually works in any of the 3 slots. Cards are detected, machine makes its funny beep noise, Windows sees the hardware and identifies correctly but says the resources aren't available for it to function.

Attemped and failed 32 bit hardware:
-Generic-branded eBay ethernet (Realtek internally)
-Generic-branded eBay wifi (IPone Airgate 2200)
-Sonnet Aria Extreme wifi
-Syba USB+Firewire combo

All verified to work on a Dell Latitude CSx (P3, running XP)

Is it just misinformation (I wouldn't be surprised) floating around online then that a BIOS solution could resolve this type of issue?