Powerbook Duo 270c - Mac newbie, need help please :)

[Thy_Pope]

First, the specs:

68030 processor

16 megs of RAM

hard drive 240 megs (had to start Norton Utilities and then Norton Disk Doctor to find that out, couldn't figure it out from the mere folder windows)

MacOS 7.6

The machine appears to have been made in 1993.

Now, I'm generally happy with it. I like the trackball more than I like touchpads in general. Great color screen for that age. But I need some information.

What kind of external floppy disk drive should I look for, so that I can use it with this laptop?

What kind of internal hard drive should I be looking for? (hopefully bigger than 200-300 megs, too!)

Where can I get a spare RAM card for it? (Ebay really didn't help, and neither did MemoryTen - "this item is not in stock and can ship today") It seems that the machine came with 4 megs soldered on, and users would buy RAM upgrade cards. Mine has a 12 MB card and of course I'd go for the 28 meg version.

Where can I get an optical drive for this? I'm assuming I can't get anything better than a plain CD-ROM.

Most importantly, where can I get those cool docking stations that have Ethernet and two SCSI outputs for floppy and optical drive? There is one called Emachines Etherdock, and one called Rasterops Duomate16sc... any of those are good, but maybe there are other ones?

Hoping to find some info, so feel free to comment and thanks!

 

[Strimkind]

Nice find. I've been looking for one without too much luck.

As for upgrades, well they are hard to come by.

The RAM card is a hit and miss on ebay and LEM (I found a 36MB card on ebay).

The hard drive uses a portable SCSI. They have not made anything bigger than 1GB unless you are lucky and find the very rare SCSI to IDE adapter Apple Made.

As for a floppy, you first need a dock of some kind that has the floppy port. Then you need to find a Powerbook100/Duo floppy drive. Again, hard to find.

Finally, for an external SCSI CD-ROM you will need a dock. Generally a mini-dock or Duo Dock will do. I am not sure if they made a Micro-Dock with SCSI on it. You will also need a HDI-30 adapter to plug in any SCSI device. The 'cool' SCSI docks are uncommon and most hold on to them or demand a premium.

 

[Thy_Pope]

Thanks for that. SCSI comes in more flavours, as you can seee here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scsi#Parallel_SCSI

But judging by the years in that table, the only SCSI standard that ever existed in 1993 was SCSI-1 or Narrow SCSI.

The adapter you were talking about, did it look like these?

http://www.ultradrives.com/product_info.php/products_id/444

http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/1/1/120431-startech-com-ltd-startech-com-idc50-female-hddb68-female-scsi-adapter-gc5068ff.html

The RAM card. Should I understand that the computer could theoretically use even 128 megs or more, but there were no such cards made? Because I wouldn't mind asking for a custom version with more RAM on it from some company.

The floppy port. Is it the same connector with the CD-ROM connector? From what I can see here

http://retromaccast.ning.com/profiles/blogs/emachines-etherdock-for-the

the floppy connector on the back is the same with the CD-ROM one, but the pinouts could be different indeed.

Thank you so far

 

[Strimkind]

Yeah, everything was Narrow SCSI back when. The internal is completely different then what you have pictured. What you have is for a desktop.

The laptop internal SCSI is a 40pin connector and to find an adapter you either have to make it yourself, or fork out $100+ on ebay.There is also this topic regarding making an adapter.

The SCSI and Floppy port are different. The floppy port is a HDI-20 port and are not interchangeable.

The Max ram for the 270c I believe is 32MB using a 28MB card. The largest made was a 48MB card for the Duo 2300c.

 

[funkytoad]

Congratulations. That is a great little machine. I too have a Duo 270c. I have a setup with the Duo MiniDock. It looks something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Duominidock.jpg

Occasionally, these floppy drives pop up on eBay: http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/collection/articlepics/duo2300/snap11.jpg

 

[Thy_Pope]

Thanks for all the info! Well, I was suggesting that I could take the existing RAM card out of the machine (I have a 12 MB one) then go to a RAM factory and say "hey, make a 508 MB card that would be compatible with this one!"

The floppy drive, I think I found one for 35$. Since I am not American, I will need assistance from someone American who also has Paypal so that I can send the money, but I'm gonna wait until I actually have the money

I noticed, in that Wikipedia picture http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Duominidock.jpg that the CD-ROM drive is connected to what looks like a printer cable that goes into a black adapter that goes into the docking station. I think this means I can get a regular 5.25" hard drive rack, shove some sort of optical drive there, then use a regular parallel printer cable to connect it to the docking station via that black adapter (that would probably be called "SCSI to Centronics" or "to DB-25" or something like that).

My problem remains the docking station - where can I get one that has floppy, external SCSI and Ethernet? Are these even known in the Powerbook world or did I just stumble into something that few people actually knew existed? I'm talking about that E-machines Etherdock and the Rasterops Duomate16sc.

Thanks loads!