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Comment by lb1lf | Hacker News Reader

Oooh, I finally managed to coax my manager into getting me a ToughBook at a previous gig, after I'd churned through a Dell Mobile Workstation or two a year doing field work.

The ToughBook lasted years. True, the keyboard left a bit to be desired, the screen ghosted like you wouldn't believe and the colours were a bit, uh, off, not to mention ridiculous resolution - but killing the thing was essentially impossible.

It is the Land Cruiser of laptops. Expensive, sluggish, heavy, indestructible.

It even had a serial port (and, still does as an optional extra!)

Nowadays, I spend much less time in the field and use a T14. Has served me well thus far. Oh, and I can actually carry it around without thinking twice of it.

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Dell's rugged line has a serial port standard AND gives you the option of having an additional serial port! Now if they would only make a 4 serial port version then we could hook up the jet engine software we have without an adapter....

There's no OBD2 port for jet engines I guess? :)

No, but both Arinc 825 and OBD2 are based on CAN, so at very small expense some of them could have.

There are some Dells that are quite indestructible as well. OTOH, it’s usually cheaper to let someone kill a couple laptops than to get a single rugged one. Plus, not all parts of the dead laptop are destroyed, so things like memory and solid-state storage can be easily transplanted to the next victim.

This is true, as long as a day in the field without a working laptop does not cost comparably to a new laptop. Imagine your laptop cracking and ceasing to work when the helicopter that brought you to the interesting location has just disappeared in the distance.

To me, that's the real Toughbook market: when the supply chain is impractically far away and downtime is unacceptable.

This was my M.O. - something had failed on a ship somewhere or other. Sometimes, it was dockside (Hooray!), more often than not off some disagreeable coast, meaning I'd get airlifted out bringing anything I could conceivably need (and a few things I couldn't, just to make sure!) - then make sure it all worked before I left.

I always carried a couple of USB sticks with software, licences and documentation on them - one in my carry-on, one in a zippered pocket - and extra interface cables &c so that if everything went oops, I could just borrow a laptop at the client end, install my stuff and get going in a few cups of coffee's time.

Most interesting experience: A customer managed to store their spare parts ashore (!), and we found the reason a big oceanographic sampling system didn't work was because a very proprietary plug inside a data acquisition device hadn't been properly inserted during assembly, damaging the connector beyond repair.

We wound up having to disassemble a small DC motor (to get at the lacquer wire - very, very small cross section!) and hand solder jumper wires onto each of the 88 pins on the PCB.

Took us a few hours, each of which cost our client on the order of $7k in fuel and crew wages, but it worked in the end, ship's electrician and I taking turns getting those pesky, small wires in place without upsetting the work we'd already done.

Soldering .02" pitch connectors with a bog standard Weller iron is a character-building experience. It gets better once you've tacked a needle onto the tip, though.

The alternative? Taking the whole vessel back inside helicopter range, then airlift a $5 plug out (Oh, and a crimp tool! Might as well bring a spare plug, too. Just in case.) That would have cost significantly more than the downtime they had while we were soldering.

Having the spares aboard so that we'd be looking at them instead of for them when we figured out what was wrong? Ten minutes of downtime, $5 in parts, done.

I was really impressed when touring a museum ship on how complete their on-board engineering section was. They could do fairly extensive repairs on very large components of the engine without needing to limp back to shore. Or, at least, fix enough they could limp back to shore.

>A customer managed to store their spare parts ashore (!)

I'm going to bet they /never/ had to use those spare parts before and thought they were dead weight.

Happens everytime. That box of cables you threw out last week because you never opened it in the past 20 years? Yeah, something just broke and you need one of those cables now.

Happens. Every. Fucking. Time.

And everyone wonders why I look like a chronic hoarder.

Oh, the problem is rarely the ship's crew - they know all too well that if something breaks and they haven't got a spare, they're up shit creek.

The problem is rather - I'll just let my prejudices roam freely, my apologies - beancounters who realize that it is a waste to keep X sets of spare parts on X ships, when they are hardly ever used - heck, much more cost-efficient to keep one set of spares in a common location, then dispatch as needed.

Except, of course, that 'dispatch' is non-trivial if you're, say, doing core samples along the mid-Atlantic ridge...

It definitely sounds like I won that bet. :V

The usual dialog:

— Why are you carrying this around? You won't need it.

— Exactly so that I won't need it.

(Works well with umbrellas, leathermans, band aids, etc.)

Curious minds: what's the best way to field heat-bond a needle onto a soldering iron?

I'm guessing mechanically secure it with something heat tolerant (steel wire) for most of the tip length + lube the interface with molten solder? Then crank it to 11 to get enough heat to the tip?

You make the length of the business end of the needle protruding from the tip of the iron as short as possible, wrap copper braid around tip+neddle, put on a very small hose clamp on top, then turn on the iron and give the copper braid as much solder as it can absorb.

Then you start soldering, after a few successful ops you figure this is going to be a walk in the park - and are promptly attitude readjusted by a blob of solder dripping off the iron and onto your PCB.

Did succeed in the end, though.

Maybe drilling a hole slightly smaller than the needle and cooling down the needle until it would fit inside the hole?

Or spin the needle inside the hole until it welds itself.

A family member has a Toughbook for sailing. There are no repair shops at sea.

I still strongly suggest packing two laptops in that case. If you need them, you need them.

From the full specs PDF: https://ftp.panasonic.com/connect/mobility/TOUGHBOOK%2040%20...

I see: Optional Serial (True) D-sub 9-pin 6

Where "6* says:

    > VGA+Serial+LAN or USB-A+HDMI+Serial or USB-A(x2)+HDMI or Fischer LAN or USB-C+USB-A+HDMI in Rear Expansion Area are mutually exclusive.

Wow, I had to lookup Fischer LAN. Never heard of that before. It looks like a IP68-rated Ethernet connection! Ref: https://fischerconnectors.com/en/news-blog/high-speed-data-m...

Certain APAC markets get Toughbooks that are derivatives of their JDM Let's Note models: https://ap.connect.panasonic.com/sg/en/products/toughbook/to...

Something that's a bit closer to a T14 in portability (albeit this is a X13 competitor - there's a JDM only 14" Let's Note).

Sadly, it's a few generations behind the latest 12" Let's Note model that have welcome improvements such as 3:2 displays (rather than 16:9).

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