I got a DUO!!!...but.......

[Bunsen]

NOOOO!!! Duo ditchers are shot at dawn around here [] ]'>

First step, read the profile of both models on lowendmac.com (from "mac specs" in the top navigation bar)

Then realise that all of these symptoms are common, fixable and have been encountered by folks here and at applefritter* dozens of times. Realise that the power adapters work, and you have a floppy drive and/or the Dock to do system software installs.

Then look at the fun fixit project you have in front of you, all free!

The batteries will be flat, if not dead. Leave the Duo on the charger (but not running) overnight or longer to get some juice into them.

Try removing the battery and the power, press the rear button and hold it down for a count of 60 seconds. Then put the power back in, but not the battery, and try a boot. Then try with the battery.

The Dock simply makes faint ticking sounds when I plug it in

This is known as the "tick of death". Google that and duo-dock and you'll find details of the single capacitor that needs replacing in the power supply.

"Make sure that the logic board mounting screw that also serves as a battery contact is installed. (Screw should be installed on contact located on right side)" - what is this about?

There's no picture?

The 210 has decent specs for 7.1.

For the sticker goo, try naptha (sold as lighter fluid). A small drop on a cloth and rub away. Do a patch test on the underside first.

* btw the integrated search at applefritter is bloody useless. Use Google with "site:applefritter.com" after your keywords instead

 

[The Macster]

Thanks for the input so far, much appreciated

Try removing the battery and the power, press the rear button and hold it down for a count of 60 seconds. Then put the power back in, but not the battery, and try a boot. Then try with the battery.

Tried that just now with the 230, but still nothing It just makes this high-pitched sound when I try to power it up using the rear button, the sound stopping when I release the button. The front button does nothing, not even the sound.

Give the batteries in the 210, first the main and then the internal PRAM, time to charge overnight. Then if necessary you can research how to resync the power manager. Since the 210 does boot (admittedly with some extra effort) you can use it to verify both adaptors are good, and if either or both main batteries charge and have any capacity whatsoever. If you have at least one good adaptor and main battery pack, you can then apply them to the Duo 230 overnight to see if the PRAM internal battery can be recharged.

So is it better to let the batteries charge and then try the 60-second thing described above? One of the batteries is a non-Apple one, so presumably a newer replacement, but that seemed to show 2 bars on the battery meter in OS 7.1, unchanging. The other (Apple) battery showed 5 bars when I started up just now, then dropped to 3 and is now back up to 5, apparently charging.

Earlier I pressed the 210's power button with the non-Apple battery inserted and no power adapter connected to see if there was any life in it, and the screen just flickered, as if there was a tiny bit of charge. After that I had the problem booting the 210 but since then it's been fine - could it be that it was unhappy about being almost started up like that but not having enough power to start up?

As for resetting the power manager, apparently you have to let it stand with no adapter, main battery or backup battery connected. The backup battery is buried away inside somewhere inaccessible, but it would maybe be possible to disconnect the cable connecting the backup battery to the logic board - is the one for the backup battery the one with three little wires, as opposed to the one with two wires (which is presumably the trackball)?

Both of the adapters appear to be functional though.

Edit: I just found a page that says these machines won't start up if the backup battery is dead - is this correct? The 210 was set to year 1904 when it started up, so presumably its battery wasn't charged either.

Oh, and another question about the batteries - the original Apple one seems to have a little slider on it that can be used to select between a picture of a full battery and one of an empty battery. Is this something to do with discharging it - are these the type of battery that has to be discharged before recharging? Should I do anything with this slider?

"Make sure that the logic board mounting screw that also serves as a battery contact is installed. (Screw should be installed on contact located on right side)" - what is this about?

There's no picture?

There's not, although I'm thinking now that it may be referring to one of the screws that is inside underneath the keyboard, as opposed to the ones in the underside of the machine (which are the ones that the 230 is missing).

The Dock simply makes faint ticking sounds when I plug it in

This is known as the "tick of death". Google that and duo-dock and you'll find details of the single capacitor that needs replacing in the power supply.

Damn, so you mean it's dead? :'( (I can't do soldering/capacitors/power supply innards) I guess I will have to try freecycling it to someone else who wants it then - I have the MiniDock and HDI-20 floppy anyway, as well as a PowerBook SCSI adapter/SCSI CD drive from previous liberations, so I suppose I don't really need the main Dock - it doesn't seem to have the coprocessor, cards, Vram, or anything like that fitted, so there's presumably no advantage over the MiniDock? Is the floppy drive in it a standard auto-inject one that can be put in an LC or similar, as I do need one of those?

The power supply in my LC makes a very similar sound and then springs into life after about 10 minutes of doing that, but this doesn't seem to - is it a different issue? I do have a replacement LC power supply from Freecycle but haven't got round to putting it in yet, which will hopefully resolve that.

NOOOO!!! Duo ditchers are shot at dawn around here [] ]'>

Nooo! *runs scared*

The little "Express Modem DAA" seems to rattle, so I don't know if that's dead too? This is maybe a stupid question, but is that supposed to plug into the port with a picture of a telephone sitting on a stand, or the one with a telephone handset and some dots coming out of it? What is the difference between those two ports? Most Macs only have the latter, don't they, whereas the MiniDock and DuoDock seem to have both.

Thanks again

 

[Patrickool93]

Don't toss/freecycle the dock! Really, you should try soldering. If you mess this up, it won't matter, right? If not...I Wonder about shipping to the US....

 

[The Macster]

It's not just the fear of messing it up, more that I don't own any soldering kit, don't have any idea how to go about it, and don't really want to start doing messy/dangerous stuff like that which I'm sure I'd screw up anyway...and I don't know anything about capacitors either eg where you get them/which one to get/how to attach and detach them or anything at all...and I seem to remember hearing that it's very dangerous to open a power supply, they are meant to be left sealed (that's why they have all those warning signs stuck on them ).

The Dock isn't actually in great condition anyway - it's got the outline of a CRT monitor yellowed into the top, it has "Property of MRC molecular biology lab" etched into the top at the front", and as I said it doesn't have any of the bits fitted that make it better than the MiniDock (coprocessor, Vram etc - I assume there is no hard drive in there, though even if there is it will be tiny).

 

[Quadraman]

You might have to open up the 210 and disconnect and reseat the internal connectors. When I got the PB 150 I got recently home, it wouldn't power up and the hard drive just made clicking noises instead of spinning up. I took it all apart and reconnected all the cables and now it starts up and run fine (except the LCD screen which needs replacing due to a dead zone).

 

[The Macster]

Do you mean the 230? (ie the one that seems totally dead, or the 210 that gave me death chimes at one point but seems OK now) Which cables in particular - do just the ones that I can reach under the keyboard do the trick?

 

[Quadraman]

Do you mean the 230? (ie the one that seems totally dead, or the 210 that gave me death chimes at one point but seems OK now) Which cables in particular - do just the ones that I can reach under the keyboard do the trick?

I don't know what your Duos look like inside, but they can't be too dissimilar from my 150. I reseated the connections on the hard drive cable, the floppy cable, the lcd connectors, the modem card and another card that I couldn't identify that might be RAM. It powered right up after that. I don't know about the lock issue. Do you mean the Duo is secured inside the dock with a key and you can't get it out without it? You'll need a locksmith or someone gifted with a set of picks to get it open if that's the case.

 

[The Macster]

No, I managed to get the 210 out of the Dock - luckily it wasn't locked as I didn't get the key with it. It wouldn't come out because I think it has to be ejected while powered on, but the Dock is dead so can't be powered on. I found some sort of emergency eject switch on the side though, which made it come out. The 210 that was in the Dock is the one that works; the 230 that I got originally (what started this whole thing! - If I hadn't got I'd never have got all this other Duo stuff and it'd still be languishing in a storeroom somewhere) is the one that just makes a high-pitched sound when I press the rear power button. I'm leaving it plugged in tonight as advised, though I don't know if that'll help to get it going or not...

I can't even see things like the hard drive from looking under the keyboard of the 230 - I think it is buried underneath somewhere. I don't really want to start demolishing it, so we will have to exhaust all other options first It may be that the 230 doesn't even work at all, as the person I got it from seemed unsure whether it worked.

 

[The Macster]

I tried it again this morning but still no luck The only sign of life (?) it showed was that the Caps Lock light came on when I plugged it in after having unplugged it and held the rear button for 60 seconds. It didn't come on when I tried this for a second time though.

Also, any more thoughts on my questions in my post 7 above this?

 

[wally]

When the 230 is powered up, can you turn the caps lock light on and off by repeated hits to that key?

Any response to repeated trials (like 15) of chorded (ctrl option command) keys held down simultaneously and pressing the keyboard front power button?

Will either dock support an external monitor and floppy with the 210? If so try the 230 in that dock with external monitor booting from a floppy. The interesting question is whether the 230 even tries to read anything. If the LCD is out, and the internal hard drive pulled, the caps lock key/light may be the only I/O bits connected without a dock.

 

[The Macster]

Yes, I have had some response from the Caps Lock key, after having tried the thing you suggested of holding the rear button for one minute and with the battery out. Also, why do these machines seem to start up as soon as you plug them in (at least the 210 seems to), without actually having to press the power switch?

I don't seem to getting anything by repeatedly pressing the front power button with the other keys held down though. When I press the rear button it makes this high-pitched sound that doesn't stop until I release the button - what is that?

Would it not still chime if it was starting up but had no hard drive and the screen wasn't working? I can't try what you suggested at the moment as I'm not at home so don't have all my Mac bits here. I did try hooking up the MiniDock and the HDI-20 Floppy (the full-size DuoDock is apparently completely dead ) to see if I could hear it looking for a disc, but possibly Mac drives don't make that buzzing sound that PC ones do when there's no disc inserted.

Should I try disconnecting the backup battery for 10 minutes or not? I'm assuming it would be dead anyway so this wouldn't make any difference? If this is necessary, do you just pull out the cable to the logic board, there's no more to releasing the cable than that?

Holding down the rear button while it's plugged in wouldn't help would it? It just seems to make this squeaking sound if you do that.

Do you know whether they can actually start up with a dead backup battery? The battery in the other one is dead as far as I can tell but it still fires up - just I found a website that said you need a working battery to be able to start them up.

 

[wally]

If the caps lock light reliably can be toggled on and off with the key, at least some logic is powered up correctly, an encouraging but not definitive sign.

Some disassembly, close inspection, and disconnection may be necessary to locate the high pitched sound. Could be the speaker, or perhaps a malfunctioning LCD backlight inverter, or a malfunctioning onboard switching regulator having trouble charging some bad battery connections. If it's from the inverter swapping display components might yield a working 230.

Some of my powerbooks (PB1400) do not chime if the speaker volume is at minimum, do not know about the 230.

I think some 68kmla member commented that grayscale LCDs can be read even if their backlights are out if bright external light comes from the right angle. It would be good to look carefully to see if the blinking no boot disk found icon is being displayed with no backlight. Also try the contrast and brightness controls over their full range from min to max, if the PRAM is misbehaving these initial settings can be anywhere from full off to full on.

With respect to backup batteries, startup behavior upon plugin and power manager resetting, I am not an expert and my experience contradicts some of what I have read on the net. It's clearly best to have known good batteries from the 210 to debug the 230. I have seen powerbooks refuse to boot without charged PRAM batteries, and I have one yet to be investigated 520 that boots but looses PRAM LCD, date, time and mouse settings. I am suspecting there are degrees of badness, such as half battery voltage, that preserve settings but might disable writing or updating settings. Somewhere on the net I have seen a big list by powerbook model of how to reset the power manager, and it is model dependent. Some disassembly and measuring the voltage of the batteries and debugging with known good ones helps to reduce the number of unknowns.

I've not found it necessary to remove or disconnect the internal PRAM battery to do a reset, only the removable main battery and of course the adaptor plug followed by the button combinations that you have already tried. But I do support the recommendations of others to get inside and disconnect and reseat internal connectors, including the PRAM battery, just to overcome minor corrosion bad connections that are common due to age.

 

[The Macster]

Pressing the rear button seems to (sometimes) get into a state where the caps lock light will work, while the front button does nothing. If I power it on with the rear button, pressing Cmd+Ctrl+front power doesn't make the caps lock light go out or seem to do anything. Pressing the rear button makes it go out, and also makes the squeaking sound (at the moment it seem to be making that noise only when I turn it off with the rear button, not on).

The backup battery in the 210 seems dead too, or at least it was showing year 1904. I don't have any working PB backup batteries - the 520's is dead too but it works without it (it does forget the backlight settings etc though).

The squeaking seems to be to do with power, though I don't know what - the 210 seems to do it briefly at the moment I plug the adapter in, while this one does it while I am pressing the rear switch.

There's nothing on the screen as far as I can see - no signs of life apart from squeaking and the caps lock light

This is the method for resetting the power manager that I found for the Duo - basically it just says hold the power button on the rear down for a while, and if that doesn't work try removing all power sources for 10 minutes and then try again (though it doesn't say whether to hold the rear power button again or not)). I've tried all that (except disconnecting the internal battery, which looks dead anyway) to no avail

But I do support the recommendations of others to get inside and disconnect and reseat internal connectors, including the PRAM battery, just to overcome minor corrosion bad connections that are common due to age.

Yes, well that is the absolute last resort should nothing else work, second only to the poor 'book hitting the bin I guess... :'( :'( :'(

Edit: the squeaking seems to be coming from the point where the power lead plugs into the machine, though as I said the 210 does it briefly when you first plug it in too, so I don't know if it's a problem or not (though this one does it when you press the rear switch, as opposed to when you plug it in).

 

[wally]

Well, you can't do better than that article for authoritative info on the power manager. Well, it's a bit beyond the warranty period anyway, you might have to go in and do some careful exploratory surgery on one or both DUOs. No guarantee that something else is not additionaly wrong, but the bad PRAM battery is a known boot stopper (sometimes) that needs to be overcome. And so are bad connections. Sometimes one of my 1400 powerbooks gets in a indeterminate startup state with blank screen on. The convenient escape seems to be three keys, control option command together with the front power button. The power manager is a bit of mystery to me, but the reset works for me.

 

[The Macster]

Just now I seemed to get it into a state (by pressing combinations of power buttons etc) where it's emitting a little squeak from the place where the power cord enters the machine about every 2 seconds - the sound seems to be related to power going into/through the machine (come to think of it, it's a bit like that sound you get when the lead is coming a little way out of your laptop adapter, if you know the sound I mean), and is possibly coming from the direction of the two small square things in that corner of the machine under the keyboard that have white labels with some numbers and "AT+T" on them, and it looks like there's a coil of very thin copper wire underneath the label, whatever those things are. I tried unplugging it, and when I plugged it back in and pressed the front power switch it started doing the same thing again, a little squeak every two seconds.

No guarantee that something else is not additionaly wrong, but the bad PRAM battery is a known boot stopper (sometimes) that needs to be overcome.

I assume that the backup batteries are nothing resembling an ordinary battery though, so there is no way they could be easily replaced anyway, so if it needs replacing to be able to start up then the machine is dead :'(

Well, it's a bit beyond the warranty period anyway, you might have to go in and do some careful exploratory surgery on one or both DUOs.

I definitely want to avoid fiddling with the working and complete Duo (the 210), given that opening a working machine (especially having never opened a laptop before!) can only make things worse... The screws look to be those ones that can't easily be released with normal screwdrivers anyway.

 

[LCGuy]

They're 8 bit Torx screws, you'll need a Torx-8 screwdriver...you can get 'em at most electronics stores.

 

[wally]

I took another close look at the photograph of the 230 you posted re memory expansion, which shows the whole logic board. It looks to me like all of the connections that one might unplug/replug are accessible when the keyboard is lifted. Just ground yourself to the metal outer frame to equalize any static charge difference before touching anything inside, although just lifting the keyboard by its frame probably does this anyway.

The two magnetic components marked AT&T are part of the DC power conversion apparatus for converting the 24 volts input to voltages needed for battery charging and by the laptop. When they are operating correctly they vibrate slightly at an ultrasonic frequency. Their solder joints need to be carefully inspected for cracking and if you can get really tight sharp (tripod mounted) photos of them (the solder joints) and of the area to the left of them and above D4 right around the 33/25V round surface mount electrolytic capacitor (yes, the very same case style that leaks and needs to be replaced in SE/30s) we can look for irregularities and corrosive fluid leakage.

If you look at the area right above the trackball, there (left to right) appear to be four connectors, first the case latch switch that commands sleep when the cover is closed, then the trackball connector, then the three wire PRAM battery connector, and then (gulp) the place where I think the hard drive flexible PC connector should have been plugged. If that connector block thing with 30 positions is marked J15, it is an indication that the drive was pulled.

Once the top cover is removed per the Apple service manual, the PRAM battery is easily replaced (a mail order or eBay item, but be careful you get the correct part number, some of the eBay ads are wrong!)

 

[The Macster]

I took another close look at the photograph of the 230 you posted re memory expansion, which shows the whole logic board. It looks to me like all of the connections that one might unplug/replug are accessible when the keyboard is lifted. Just ground yourself to the metal outer frame to equalize any static charge difference before touching anything inside, although just lifting the keyboard by its frame probably does this anyway.

I tried removing and replacing the one that looks like the ribbon cable to the screen - there's not much else in there that would really come out as far as I could tell.

The two magnetic components marked AT&T are part of the DC power conversion apparatus for converting the 24 volts input to voltages needed for battery charging and by the laptop. When they are operating correctly they vibrate slightly at an ultrasonic frequency. Their solder joints need to be carefully inspected for cracking and if you can get really tight sharp (tripod mounted) photos of them (the solder joints) and of the area to the left of them and above D4 right around the 33/25V round surface mount electrolytic capacitor (yes, the very same case style that leaks and needs to be replaced in SE/30s) we can look for irregularities and corrosive fluid leakage.

I can't see any problems in that area of the board with my untrained eye - as far as I can tell there's no leakage around the capacitor and the bits around the AT&T-marked components don't appear damaged. I don't have a proper camera, this is the best picture I can get with my phone at the moment (it might work better when it's sunnier here though), though you probably can't really see anything from that.

If you look at the area right above the trackball, there (left to right) appear to be four connectors, first the case latch switch that commands sleep when the cover is closed, then the trackball connector, then the three wire PRAM battery connector, and then (gulp) the place where I think the hard drive flexible PC connector should have been plugged. If that connector block thing with 30 positions is marked J15, it is an indication that the drive was pulled.

Damn!! > :'( You mean that's where the cable from the hard drive is supposed to come in? Well if there's no drive in it then it's definitely dead then, as these drives are impossible to come by and I don't have any spares (even the one in my PB520 barely works). What's really irritating is that it's the better PowerBook that is dead - if it was the 210 that was dead then I'd just give it to one of you guys and be happy with the 230. As it is the 230 is better, and also the underside of the 210 has security etchings so is not such a good collector's piece.

RIP PowerBook Duo 230, 1992-2007 :'(

 

[Bunsen]

One thing - could be bad RAM. Try with no extra RAM in the slot, then with known good RAM from the 210, and the 210's hard drive. The Duo can be a bit persnickety about RAM apparently.

 

[The Macster]

How exactly do you get the Ram card out? They show it just being put down into the machine and then pushed into the slot in the service manual, to install it, but they don't show you how to get it out and there's not anywhere that I can see that you can get a grip on it to pull it out of the slot (it's all surrounded by other bits and there's no gaps around the slot that you can lever it out from) - it seems very firmly stuck in there.

Edit: nevermind, got it out in the end. Duo is still very much dead though :'(

PS the Ram card does have chips on both sides, so must be another 8 megger from what we discussed before about the chip sizes.