Thread: Fujitsu Stylistic st4110 Tablet PC

wow, that maxvista is cool.

william, just seeing this post. the digitizer is not in front of the screen at all, the digitizer is actually BEHIND the lcd, so it doesn't affect viewability at all, there is a hard plastic overlay over the lcd to protect it while using the digitizer but this can be removed if a touchscreen is also added. keep one thing in mind though, to use a digitizer AND touchscreen, you will need a way to disable the touchscreen if/when the digitizer is used or a click will register as 2 clicks, one from the touchscreen & one from the digitizer, using anything but the magnetic digitizer pen though of course only the touchscreen will register so that's fine, but a touch from the magnetic pen if both is active will register as 2. you can easily just switch power off to the touch controller when digitizer function is desired. if you don't care for the digitizer just don't use it, no need to remove it really... of course the digitiser will only work when connected to the fujitsu board, if you want to use JUST the lcd you can do that, you will need a vga controller with the proper lvds output & that can run the screen as just an lcd for use with any computer...

Originally Posted by peijffertje

I'm thinking of using the tablet PC solution for my other car and Im thinking about using a dockingstation.

Thing is, the dockingstation's "foot" is too large to cram up the hole where my radio is. Are these dockingstations easy to hack?

Sorry it's taken so long to respond, but the Road Runner standardization project is taking off and I'm having a hell of a time keeping up. Now let's talk about dissecting a ST4121 dock. The task is really not that complicated. The foot can be completely removed as I have done it three or for times so far. This is not a how to or documentary I have some pictures I put together with parts I had laying around to give you an idea of how I did it. Your results may vary.

If you already have a dock you'll recognize the outside of the base.

The inside of the base is mostly just metal shielding. Of note is the circled area where I had to make a cutout to safely remove the cable bundle from the top of the base and maintain the entire locking half of the dock intact.


One quick cautionary note: on my first attempt I cut some of the wires in the bundle because I rushed the cutout. Here's a closeup.


Be careful with that bundle - alot of the wires there are the same color and the cables are tightly fit into the shielding. Here is where the dock's circuit board fits into the casing.


Here's what the working part of the bottom half of the dock looks like (minus the casing, optical dive and unplugged from the top half of the dock)


The actual circuit board inside the bottom half is tiny. here are some rulers for good measure.

And the height is less than an inch.


In my Caddy, I wrapped the board in shielding, plugged everything in and just crammed it into a single din slot and covered the slot with what I created to hold the upper half of the dock. In my Mustang, I bought a project box from Radio Shack (which was three times too tall), cutout the holes for the connectors (power, 3USB, Audio out, Firewire, JAE50, video and upper dock cable), built an original base for the upper dock and just screwed the project box in place behind the upper half of the dock.

If you want pictures of the mounts an installs, you'll have to wait a week or two till I'm ready to install my fusion brain in my Caddy. At that time I'll take pics of how it all goes together.

As a final note, DO NOT DISSECT THE TOP HALF OF THE DOCK as I did. You're basically going to throw the bottom half away so you don't have to worry about what screws go where and what connectors go where and in what order should they be installed. I took one top half apart just to see if I could eliminate the bulky surround and just use the little connector that goes into the back of the tablet. BIG MISTAKE!!! I never did get it to go back together. There are five or six different sizes and styles of screws, eight or nine springs, levers, slides, and gears. If you look closely at the connectors depicted in the above pics there are a ton of then and they all must be fed through a 1.5" hole then spread out to the sockets in the back of the rotating part of the tablet holder - its a mess in there.

Let me know if you need more. Good luck.

Originally Posted by turbocad6

william, just seeing this post. the digitizer is not in front of the screen at all, the digitizer is actually BEHIND the lcd, so it doesn't affect viewability at all, there is a hard plastic overlay over the lcd to protect it while using the digitizer but this can be removed if a touchscreen is also added. keep one thing in mind though, to use a digitizer AND touchscreen, you will need a way to disable the touchscreen if/when the digitizer is used or a click will register as 2 clicks, one from the touchscreen & one from the digitizer, using anything but the magnetic digitizer pen though of course only the touchscreen will register so that's fine, but a touch from the magnetic pen if both is active will register as 2. you can easily just switch power off to the touch controller when digitizer function is desired. if you don't care for the digitizer just don't use it, no need to remove it really... of course the digitiser will only work when connected to the fujitsu board, if you want to use JUST the lcd you can do that, you will need a vga controller with the proper lvds output & that can run the screen as just an lcd for use with any computer...

Actually, I just removed the digitizer and added the touchscreen. It wasn't that hard and now the ts works quite well. Thanks.

Originally Posted by peijffertje

My st4121 just arived and unlike my st4120, I cant use my finger to control the touchscreen. I get it that its got to do with the digitizer story you guys are talking about, so could you please tell me how you disabled the digitizer and enabled the touchscreen?

The ST4121 comes with the digitizer only, which requires the stylus. You would need to add a touchscreen, either in addition to the digitizer like turbocad6 did, or in place of the digitizer like I did. A 10.4 touchscreen can be had for about $60 from ebay IIRC.