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My first Powerbook 210 Duo

G

galgot

6502
Just got this baby this morning :)

2014-11-03 15.39.12 HDR.jpg

2014-11-03 15.38.31.jpg

Very cute and in good shape. German Keyboard.

It started on the first try, VERY noisy Hd, and a rectangle of dead pixels on the bottom left of the screen ( which is more convenient than the usual PB150 screens upper right dead pixels rectangle ;) … Otherwise Ok. 

Then after two boots , stopped booting again and after the chime i get a 4 tones "Dah dee Da da" …?!

Looked around a bit and it seems it's = " 4 beeps = Bad checksum for the remainder of the boot ROM" .

is it fixable ?

Happy anyway, first time i see a Duo, pretty machine :)

 
Grats, galgot. The light gray KBDs rock, I need to get one of those some day. I love my Duos!

If you haven't yet, pull the battery out and give 'er another rip.

.

 
Sounds to me that the memory expansion board inside got loose. Give it a while to rest and then try to turn on again. Opening the Duo (any Duo as they all share the same case) is a lot of trouble. You can just remove the keyboard with the 4 screws at the bottom of the case that lines up horizontally and the keyboard lifts up. There are two ribbon connectors holding the keyboard ribbon cable on the middle left by the palm rest.

The memory card is at the middle right of the board if you have one, the modem card is above that on the upper right if you have one, if not there will be a blank card for the reset button. Just push the memory card back into the connector slot.

This is a link for the service manual. http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/powerbook/powerbook_200_series.pdf

 
Congrats Gael,

Let us know, concerning keyboard, can you re-arrange keys to the usual AZERTY french style ?

 
Well, i tried :

- reset the PMU( holding back power for at least 30sec), 

- booting without the battery,

- opening and booting with HD disconnected,

- booting with the memory expansion card removed (it was well seated when i opened the thing) ,

all this no joy. Still these 4 tones "Dah dee Da da"...

In the service manual (thanks Elfen) , at the symptom charts , it says :

"Hardware failure occurs (four-tone error chord sequence sounds after startup chord)  :

1 Disconnect hard drive data cable and reboot system. If startup sequence is normal, reseat cable and retest.



[SIZE=10pt]2 [/SIZE]Replace hard drive.

3 If the system is connected to an external floppy drive, disconnect drive and reboot system. If startup sequence is normal, reseat cable and retest. "

Given i've tried booting without HD, and it was still Dahdeedada-ing, i think there is indeed a problem with the board :-/

when i have time i'll try swapping the HD with a good working one ( i have only one…), we'll see. Can't try with a floppy, no adapter nor extern floppy drive.

Here a pict of the inside :

2014-11-03 20.17.37 HDR.jpg

@ Bibilit, Thanks Mate, don't know if i can remove individual keys and change places on these keyboards… Will check, but i don't want to break anything ;)

indeed german keyboards are strange , no "@", how do they type mail addresses :D And the ¨ are only for Ü Ö and Ä … Can't type my name correctly :D

But i like the light grey color.
[SIZE=10pt] [/SIZE]
 


 
Hi techknight, i've tried that yesterday evening... no success.

Funny it booted 2-3 times after i got it, then stopped. The HD was doing an awfull noise anyway, really loud , couldn't work with it more than 10 mn... so i thought that could be the problem.

But, will get a 270C soon :)

 
If you are just turning on the Duo with just the board, then it just needs a recap from the sounds of it.

Have you tried either freezing or heating up the motherboard with a hair dryer before turning it on? If it boot after this then it definitely needs a recap.

 
Aah you find that strange too ! Never seen another PB200 board before, so wondered if that was normal...

Look at the upper left , there is another metal wire soldered to two of the board connections, above the upper screw hole.

#Elfen, nope never tried that, will do.

 
galgot said:
@ Bibilit, Thanks Mate, don't know if i can remove individual keys and change places on these keyboards… Will check, but i don't want to break anything ;)

indeed german keyboards are strange , no "@", how do they type mail addresses :D And the ¨ are only for Ü Ö and Ä … Can't type my name correctly :D

But i like the light grey color.
Click to expand...
There's a howto somewhere on fixing the rubber rings(?) in key cap mechanism somewhere nnline, so they must be switchable. You could also go the down and dirty method using stickers and a couple of KCHR resource hacks in Resedit.

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/11915-simple-resedit-pb-keyboard-hack/

The gray is killer, but they munged up the enter key. Do those boards have an extra key or is the vertical enter key a convention in Europe? I've studiously avoided that implementation since my first VT-101 layout KBD purchase, a MAC-101.

 
I opened my Duo 210 and compared it with your pic, Galgot. There is a large ceramic "coil" L1 where you have that H-blob by the LCD connector and on the upper left where you have 4 pairs of solder pads and one set is connected I have a blank board. No solder pads, nothing there on my Duo 210.

 
Is there a resistor on the pads in the upper left corner of the Duo 230? I'd say omething smells of an indescribably fugly overclocking of a 25MHz 210 board to 33MHz 230 spec.

A missing coil next to the LCD connector might explain some video problems as well.

.

 
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