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Powerbook Duo230 with DuoDock

Berenod

Well-known member
Got lucky with a 2nd hand listing I came across.

Three Duo Docks, two of them had a powerbook inside, bought them for 100€, hoping there was some life in it.
Owner inherited them from a deceased family member, didn't even know what they were, never put power on.

Them Duo Docks are pretty rare and hard to find apparently, and I have a working Powerbook duo 230 with empty hard drive lying around, but no dock, so not yet been able to put an OS on it! So one working dock would already have been nice.

Guess I struck gold.

Both docks with the Powerbooks in them are working. As are the Powerbooks themselves! Both are Duo 230's.
The third dock seems to be dead, maybe just the powersupply, doesn't pull the powerbook in when you insert it.

The working ones seem to be specced out as well, both have a SCSI HD inside, but only one of those drives works (a 240MB Quantum).
Both docks have an extra memory stick with video ram (not sure if it's a 512KB or 1MB stick, have yet to investigate further).
They also have the optional Motorola 68882 FPU installed.

Both have extra nubus cards in them, not too sure yet which cards, guess they are to connect extra monitors, at least the card with only the DB connector puts out a signal, the one with what looks like some sort of s-video connector on both sides of the the DB connector I haven't tried yet.

The non working dock has some sort of nubus network card in it, it has the 14 ping AAUI connector witha red and green LED next to it. No dongle though.

Both powerbooks were loaded with software as well, early photoshop, some CAD program, the common Microsoft programs (Word/Excel), the back then very popular RAM Doubler (both Powerbooks seem to have 12MB installed, so an extra 8MB on top of the soldered on 4MB).

Some pictures:
IMG20220611174020.jpgIMG20220611173734.jpgIMG20220611175321.jpg
 

Berenod

Well-known member
The nubus cards:
No idea what exactly they are, the top one puts image out, have only one Apple monitor available, so couldn't try with two monitors connected.
I know lots of those cards were made, by many manufacturers, so gonna have to open the thing up to check exacty which cards...IMG20220611173005.jpgIMG20220611174200.jpg
 

Berenod

Well-known member
Both batteries obviously are dead as a dodo, anybody knows if they are repairable? Ebay doesn't seem to show any for sale...

I kind of would like to have a complete set to keep in my collection, and put the other one up for sale, obviously a completely working one with battery and everything would increase value!

Actually, one of the Powerbooks at first I tought was bad, always got stuck in some sort of bootloop, after the Welcome to MacOS screen, it always rebooted. Looks like the dead battery was the reason, taking the battery out, and it boots perfectly fine, put the battery back in, bootloop again...
 

Berenod

Well-known member
Did some research into the nubus cards in the duodocks.
One dock has a Radius PrecisionColor Pro 24XK, the other dock has a Radius Thunder IV GX 1360 card.

The card with the two round ports either side of the DB connector is some sort of digitizer, looks like made in cooperation with Canon.
Hard to find info on!
IMG20220612151731.jpg
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Great finds! You’ve got a lot of bad caps to replace though, that last Nubus card has several of them and I see corrosion. The duo 230 itself will also have a whole bunch of them in the power circuit, which have a nasty tendency to short the wrong components together and blow up the mainboard when they leak, so you should definitely get those replaced, along with more bad caps in the display of the duo. Not sure about caps in the dock itself though. That bit of work should get these running a lot more reliably!
 

CC_333

Well-known member
Wow!

You didn't just strike gold, you struck all kinds of rare and expensive metals and minerals here!

c
 

Berenod

Well-known member
Great finds! You’ve got a lot of bad caps to replace though, that last Nubus card has several of them and I see corrosion. The duo 230 itself will also have a whole bunch of them in the power circuit, which have a nasty tendency to short the wrong components together and blow up the mainboard when they leak, so you should definitely get those replaced, along with more bad caps in the display of the duo. Not sure about caps in the dock itself though. That bit of work should get these running a lot more reliably!
Yeah, am already prepared to do some recapping!
The duodock itself is not known for leaking/bad caps, with the exception of one specific Elco in the power supply (resulting in the Duodock tick of death).
Easy fix though.
The nubus card with the leaking caps I'm not too worried about, not sure it even could be useful for me, or any idea how to test. Looking at the software on the machine I guess it's for a scanner or something like that.
The radius cards (much more valuable/useful) seem to be cap free as far as I can see...

The powerbooks though, they are a hassle, hard to take apart as well without breaking plastics!
But unfortunately very necessary!
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
The nubus card with the leaking caps I'm not too worried about, not sure it even could be useful for me, or any idea how to test. Looking at the software on the machine I guess it's for a scanner or something like that.
It would still be useful to someone I'm sure, I'd think it was worth recapping but it's up to you I guess. Good luck fixing all these up, I need to get my hands on some Duo stuff at some point, it's one of the only series of PowerBooks my collection hasn't touched yet ;)
 
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