Hi welcome to Tear Down! Tuesday We've got the Panasonic see if you won Toughbook for you and well, it wasn't as tough as it sounds because it's been had the absolute crap beaten out of it and is has seen better days. Look at that. This is sent in the mailbag segment. Thank you for sending this one in.

It is an industrial windows-based computer. This is a reasonably recent model not designed for consumer use, designed for industrial and professional use. That's got a built-in barcode laser barcode scanner in it. so designed for like a inventory warehouse management going around scanning stuff, delivery drivers.

you know things like that. So complete. Windows Our platform in a rugged well. it's it.

was apparently pretty rugged, but this one is just absolutely been butchered. So look at the marks on it. Unbelievable. And it looks like it's got some sort of IP rated water.

Not waterproof, but you know, water resistant connector things which don't stay in place anyway or the screws missing. So I don't know what the hell has gone wrong with this thing Anyway, it comes with dual batteries in the thing so that you can keep it running and swap out the batteries. Very, very clever. I'm not sure what they do, play some sort of play games with that, something to do with the battery, perhaps? Anyway, I'm yeah, a very professional solution, professional interface and no doubt charging dock through that so you know they sell would sell them the professional base stations with this.

So it had plug-in and all that sort of jazz. So anyway, let's tear this puppy down and see what makes this so tough. When the going gets tough and this one so recent, it runs Windows 7 Pro Beauty and it's made in Japan All the best stuffs made in Japan It looks like a nice spot for a stylist to so that you could no doubt touch that until it shattered the WIU's glass like that I Thought it would have been some sort of Polycarp Hmm. and it's got room for a solid-state drive as well using some weird US custom connector down in there.

no doubt you, no doubt you buy that at considerable expense. from. Panasonic we've got our first little peek of what's inside. We've got some a bunch of flat flex cables in here.

this was under this cover here, and an unpopulated flat flex, presumably for whatever plugs in here. Is that like some sort of wireless option or something like that anyway, but it's like a two-way header. What is that for I don't know. Anyway, that's like a 4 Way header.

Tiny things? I Don't know, but they decided these need to be accessible. and of course this has to have 3G SIM capability. So that's going to go in there. All right here we go.

I'm gonna lift the Kilt on this thing and Tada, we're in like Flynn Check it out! Ha! We found out what those connectors were for. There you go speaker. That would have been the 2 pin 1 and the 4 pin 1 goes off to the 2 little trigger buttons and no surprises for find in full. rubber o-ring cor that's not going to come out of there in a hurry, it's been in there too long.

crusty ass but yeah, completo ring seal right around so this would be a pretty decent IP rating on the thing. I'm not actually sure what the IP rating is. Anyway, there's how I/o laser barcode scanner and got a USB port on there and right here is our GPS that's our GPS antenna right on the top side there and it's got a little coax going over so there you go. you can take those off.

very common and it's got a So the lead tech LR 90 101 chipset and that just pops straight off there. you go for those playing along at home, got ourselves the old good older surf chipset. no worries. And of course the Panasonic engineers aren't going to go to the trouble to design their own GPS and everything.

Yes, they're just gonna buy like off-the-shelf module leave it to people who have already done that and then just whack it in there. There you go, you can set little cast elations there caught on the edge of the board, there little Halfmoon ones that basically put a pad on the side of the board and then they just specify to the PCB manufacturer that you want to route straight through the center like that. Very common technique for PCB modules like that and you can just nicely mount them on the board and you get a nice little fill it into the Halfmoon cast. Elation: They're very common.

A few GPS antenna aficionados I know you want to see it. What's a Glade Hmm this on the board here. They've gone to all the effort to put tape on top of there to stop that cable coming out from the earth flat flex connector. Nice attention to detail and they're serious about having the ground strap and go over to that board from that flats.

Lex Luthor Wow Oh, and of course they've gone to the effort to LED backlight those two buttons on the back via those are flat flexes so they've had to, you know, build that into the wall. not not the mold but all the well. This looks like magnesium alloy bracket here so that's pretty good. And yeah, they've got those on the flat flex to light up those.

LEDs now I don't know what this inner this board here it says if PCB that's obviously stands for interface so I don't know what's doing there. A couple of level translators maybe I don't know I'm not going to go in and look at the part numbers down there, but it doesn't seem to do anything else. It goes down to the board, right down the bottom, down there and then buggers and then connects to all the you know, the buttons and everything over here. They could just be dedicated button detection chips I don't necessarily know.

Anyway, that's just all for the speaker and other stuff. The LEDs and the buttons and things like that got ourselves a sneaky little Wi-Fi antenna in there I Can't get the screw out yet. So obviously this entire module lifts you out and that coax snakes its way around there down on - is it that one or that one goes off some way. it's more for the antenna Rafi Shinato's Oh Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Yeah.

Oh and we found the other one. There you go. that's gonna be the Bluetooth II would be my guess. Check it out! They even went to some trouble to put some cable management down there on the board.

How sweet is that? Beautiful thumbs up Engineer I did that if the RF shielding can and bingo we're in like Flynn There is our up. Oh God Bloody cables running off every. we got another antenna over here Oh What is that another? Here you go. another Wi-Fi antenna.

What? We got two of them. Wow Anyway, got ourselves an Ericsson if five, five, two, one GW for those plane moving home, Huh? Now here's our two antenna modules coming from here. One goes direct, that's the black, one goes directly into here, the other one goes here into that board and then maybe it goes out. They've got like a just using that board as an interconnect.

Anyway, there's our two antennas. so Wireless when my W when I assume that's what it stands for you one see if you one mark two. but they are significantly different from an antenna point of view. So obviously four different bands tell you what.

Whoever specified this tape really went to town because this stuff is impossible to get off. Wow I Burnt their money. Oh jeez, what is that? You'll note that where that cable went in before, from here to here and then out here to the antenna look smack in the middle of that is this switch here. another one over there.

that's got to be an antenna switch. So you can start to see the modularity of this thing now. and this is where it's so impressive. From a system engineering, our point of view looks like we've got a big-ass inductor and tent under there so that it be localized our power supply just for the RF module.

And yeah, as I said, um, this looks like a magnesium alloy frame here. Very nice. They haven't cut corners there, they've gilded the lily and man that tapes. Incredible, but yet lots of flat flex everywhere.

Incredible system engineering. A very little wasted space inside this thing and it's looking really nice. And of course that is going to be conductive. And look at the big earth strap they got going over there from some other part of that And sure enough, check this out.

I Wonder if they've gone to the effort to add a blue cable for the bluetooth antenna? It is. Oh look, it's got blue cable. Ah, now we understand. It's actually they've silk-screened on the assembly instructions.

That is a nice bit of engineering right there to actually at the PCB design stage know what cable, what color cable that they're actually going to put in there and put that on the silk screen as an instruction to the assembly operators. Wow, that's some real systems thinking. Today our pops our self-contained laser module. Look at that.

Wow all-in-one Jeez. And obviously Panasonic wouldn't have done this. Oh, there we go. Part number for those playing along at home, how is that a symbol? tick? I think I've torn down a single tick barcode reader before, haven't I If memory serves me correctly.

I don't know. done way too many videos Anyway, that's all it takes. It's already engineered for you and they stuck this down. It's all one big flat flex.

But they did put a rigid fibreglass backing on that and they actually went to the trouble of taking the screw out there. Went to the trouble to actually earth these as well, which screw into the or go into. Oh, is that part of that? I don't know I Haven't actually seen the base station, but they've gone to the effort to earth Those have those all going right around. Very nice.

They obviously had to do that for you know, system grounding RFI reasons and today we're in. like Flynn In terms of the screen and you can see all the glasses shattered. it's a it's obviously got the polycarb on them I think I've got some glass shards in my fingers. Anyway, this is real nasty.

um they actually went for glass in there I'm not sure what type of glass it is. plate glass or whatever. does it shadow like that? uh no on the glass expert but yeah, they obviously did that. I mean here's our here is our touch screen on the front but why they went with glass to wedge that in I Don't know in such a tough book that they know people are gonna drop this thing.

It's gonna be used out in the field. Ruggedized. Why would you go with that? I don't know if anyone has the oil, would use these in the past, serviced them or whatever, or I work for a company that used them. Did you have a big history of the glass shattering? or was it so tough that they actually designed it like cool? just flicked out? mm-hmm Anyway, um I don't I don't see any real shock absorption on there in terms of like the case going into the glasses just seems to be rigidly coupled by the plastic I mean the plastics going to have some givers? Well, I'm surely you know Panasonic would have done their vibration and shock testing on these.

would have been extensive. so I'm sure they know what they're doing. This is not a one hungar brand. they would really know what they're doing.

but anyway, this one did shatter for whatever reason and well, yeah, that's very nicely integrated into no one. Well, two sided magnesium alloy package. that's really very sexy. I Like that there's glass, bloody shards everywhere.

it's awful sticking in my fingers. Maybe you can see it in HD If we separate those two hard, you can see that flat flex going off to the solid-state drive there. That's obviously some sort of serial interface. I Don't see? well.

there's daddy. Maybe there's a 15 lines on there or something. anyway. I'm not sure what interface that they've used there.

These are the battery connectors. Look at that you've got obviously the big ass flat flex contacts. You know, half a dozen pins or whatever for each power contact. No workers and we've got an insulating sheet.

Tada we're in. We don't see a processor yet, but here we go. Here's more: RF Goodness this thing's Chalker with RF is our Wi-Fi module Julie antenna. Thank you very much for playing the zoo.

Where there you go 802 11 ABG in mini PCI Express Awesome Main: PCB Lead-free thank you very much. Now there's LED rubbish. It looks like we've got our main system memory there I don't know how much memory this thing had I don't know. a couple of gigs or something like that running Windows 7 is going to be.

Ah yeah, probably something under there. Massive amount of bypassing under there, but that's not your typical BGA type pin out. Anyway, there's going to be a processor and a system. ASIC I Haven't even looked at the specs of this thing.

so I have no idea what processor it uses. I've got ourselves a battery backup in there. thank you very much. Is that a rechargeable or a primary? Not sure.

Anyway, screw there. Let's try and get this puppy out and apart, shall we? What is that connector? That's our main DC Power connector today? There you go. Who's that holding it in? Oh, there we go. We've got this is the thermal pad.

and no wonder they use in the magnesium alloy. They're using that as the heatsink inside because this is completely fanless. Of course it's awesome to run Windows 7 Family Bloody hell taped everywhere. They really didn't want this coming apart like due to vibration, everything else and tada.

Now it's certainly in like Flynn Look at this beautiful more our system memory on the top. Here there's our processor and there's not much else. No, we've been ripped off. We haven't found the processor yet.

This is the Intel system hub. I'll show you that up close because there that's got the graphics media controller. so the graphics, video, and everything else. And there's something else under there.

Come on. Come out of there. there we go. What's that baby? It's too small to be the processor There it is the AFA T to us 15 W Yes.

Know it very well. Not anyway. yes, System Controller, graphics and PCI Express and everything else under the Sun. Check it out.

They've got some glue ski under there and hello. McFly that is the processor I Thought it was too small. This is an Intel Atom. The AC 95 double Six are points towards the Intel Atom processor the Zed 500 Dart series.

so I'll link in the datasheet for that and try and get some more info on that. But there you go. Tiny little Atom processor. Look at the longitudinal die on.

that compared to the bigger system die up. There is got more than the actual processor. anyway. that's all she wrote and is that a H8s processor? They've got that separate.

We saw that in another arrived teardown. What do we do? Recently tore down another embedded. okay, the Sony and Better computer. Didn't we see a hiatus in that? Anyway, What's that chrome tell huh to check that out and nothing else.

Hugely interesting around there. There's how Alps clock main clock. I don't know. Now and then we get into the O Wind Bond.

There we go. and then we get into power stuff around here. Yeah, I'll spare the details and went mucking around on their PCB mount fuses. They're glued them four of the babies.

you know I was talking about rubberized shock mount on the screen before. well, not on the glass but dust. certainly. Big rubber baby buggy bumper around the my LCD here.

Check it out. there you go. That would have taken some out on the LCD as well. sorry on the glass but the glass is still rigidly coupled in.

Oh and they are there. you go for all you Sanyo when I saw the senior controller down in there and I don't know. decode that partner I'm a few woah LCD fanboys and there you have it that's inside the Panasonic Toughbook CF u One very interesting bit of kit as you can see like it, just tons of system integration. Everything has to be designed not only like the mainboard, but every little mechanical and this one goes RF to the hilt.

But as you as I said before, Panasonic didn't roll their own in that sort of case. Maybe they did their own antenna boards and stuff like that. but everything uses off-the-shelf are compliant modules so they wouldn't ever have to worry about that. Someone's gone to town on that.

And really, this is not built down to a price. This is a professional product for the professional market. Price point wouldn't really have mattered. They spared no expense on this thing.

I Don't know what volumes would have been on these, you know, maybe the hundreds of thousands in the end? I Don't know, Maybe it wasn't that much. Maybe in the tens of thousands something like that beginning of it. You know, even like if you've got a large customer like a UPS or the United States Postal Service or you know, someone like that might order, these are smooth, the scanning module and everything else which may have been optional, but they designed it in there from the get-go There's the little scanning module and you know they could easily sell you know, ten, twenty thousand of those to all the courier drivers and everyone else in their warehouse. inventory, scanning, and management and things like that.

So real, interesting bit of kit and an Intel Atom processor. More than enough grant just to run something like this. Windows Seven Bare-bones You know you're not going to be playing doom on this thing or what is that these days? are they bloody Crisis everyone keeps talking about? I Don't know, non up with this sort of newfangled games. Anyway, you're not gonna be playing doing anything serious on this.

it's just you know you're going to be running customized app and that's basically it. If some user was sufficiently clever, they might be able to play solitaire on it or something. I Don't know. Anyway, hope you found that really interesting.

These tear downs are always fascinating. These industrial bits of kit spared no expense, but here glass, it's obviously mm-hmm One of the weak points and I expected a bit more I Mean obviously the plastics inside this are going to be top quality. Like you know, plastics have not broke and this thing's obviously been absolutely abused to hell and back and dropped How many times I Don't know. it's just ridiculous.

And the plastics have not broken though. so these would be top quality thermoplastics. They'd be paying an absolute fortune for those, not just, oh, whatever plastic mix came in the one hand low. Factory this week they would have gotten you know they would have specified that and characterized this thing.

Shock and vibration testing to the hilt IP Testing everything else and probably meets all sorts of industrial certifications or requirements and whatnot and probably cost a fortune I Don't know if you know what these things cost back in the day. Sure, it was more than an ordinary PC I Guarantee it Anyway, if you like that video, please give it a big thumbs up. Catch you next time you.