Toughbook CF-18 Disk Interface

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KaptainTomat
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon May 11, 2026 9:23 pm

Toughbook CF-18 Disk Interface

Post by KaptainTomat »

Hello,
I know that I'm fresh here and all, but I'm stuck at this for weeks with no real answer across the WWW.
port1.jpg
port2.jpg
These are the pictures of the subject's Disk port, Panasonic describes it as a regular 44pin PATA/IDE for 2.5" disks.
From my personal opinion it looks more like a shrunk down SCSI.
Threads/Forums across the WWW either mention the OEM HDD Caddy including the adapter to this strange port
or just skip it all together.

My questions are the following:
a) Is there any commercially available adapter for this bastard?
b) If there are none, are there at least some schematics for me to rewire a regular PATA cable?
c) If both previous question are negative, is there any cheap cable from the OEM Caddy or the whole Caddy?
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those who use an ESP32 / Rasberry Pi for everything,
and those who overclock Intel Core Duo's to 6GHz

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Halamix2
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 6:39 pm
Location: Poland

Re: Toughbook CF-18 Disk Interface

Post by Halamix2 »

You might get some luck by looking up slim ATAPI, I've seen disc drives with a similar interface (although it's hard to tell from the photos how different is yours connector):
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KaptainTomat
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon May 11, 2026 9:23 pm

Re: Toughbook CF-18 Disk Interface

Post by KaptainTomat »

Halamix2 wrote: Tue May 12, 2026 5:52 pm You might get some luck by looking up slim ATAPI, I've seen disc drives with a similar interface (although it's hard to tell from the photos how different is yours connector):
Hmmm hard for me to tell from this and other pictures on the web, but the interfaces dimensions and it's inside block that divides top and bottom pins seem to be more or less the same, the only concern I have is the pin layout.
Gonna check it in the next day or 2 and post an update
There's 3 types of hardware guys:
Paranoid DIY schizophrenics,
those who use an ESP32 / Rasberry Pi for everything,
and those who overclock Intel Core Duo's to 6GHz

And I'm somehow all of them SadCool
KaptainTomat
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon May 11, 2026 9:23 pm

Re: Toughbook CF-18 Disk Interface

Post by KaptainTomat »

Alright, so I checked, and it is actually Slimline ATAPI, in the regard to my questions about adapters to SATA, there are none commercially available, however there are somewhat (but still very difficult) adapters to 3.5" PATA/ATA, which then could be plugged into a SATA adapter.

In case someone stumbles into my problem in the future the adapters are referring to Slimline JAE CD/DVD. NOT atapi or slim optical or whatever else I read across other forums/tech revies about the CF-18
There's 3 types of hardware guys:
Paranoid DIY schizophrenics,
those who use an ESP32 / Rasberry Pi for everything,
and those who overclock Intel Core Duo's to 6GHz

And I'm somehow all of them SadCool