Hi All,
Well, my Sister came to visit recently, and she brought with her the
Powerbook Duo 230 that her work colleague had given her. This is the story:
The work colleague's brother had upgraded his computer with something else,
and was getting rid of this machine. He gave it to his sister throw on the
skip. This woman (Sue) thought about my sister (Tracy) who has an iMac and
offered her the Duo saying; "Seeing as how you know about Apple's I thought
you might be interested in this. Maybe you can get some use out of it. If
not, then make sure you put a brick through it before throwing it on the
skip".
So my Tracy phoned me and told me about it. She then brought it here.
Its got a 120Mb hard drive, full set of System 7.1 floppy disks, a Duo Dock
(missing the keys for the key lock), an Apple CD300 external CD drive, which
is missing its CD sled, and an Apple Macintosh display. I have the manual
for an external 1.44Mb floppy disk drive, but that never came here so I
presume it died a death somewhere along the line.
I re-initialised the HDD and installed the following software that was
supplied:
- Microsoft Word 5.1
- Claris MacDraw Pro
It also came with the rather brilliant 'Prince of Persia' but not the
manual, so as soon as you finish level one, you cannot proceed any further
as it requires password verification from the manual.
The monitor is in reasonably good shape, it buzzes a bit, and there's a
slight horizontal line burnt into the display screen, but that's not too
noticeable.
There is a manual for a Fax/Modem but I can't find any hard evidence of it
on the computer itself, whether its internal to the powerbook itself, or
whether its been added internally to the Duo Dock. On the back left hand
side of the dock is a phone connection of an ADB style, so I'm kind of
presuming the fax/modem was external and never arrived with all the stuff my
sister brought here.
The battery on the Powerbook is completely dead and hold zero charge. It
works just fine in the dock.
Basically, I think its a fine computer and will be good for doing a variety
of things. So I need to know, or find;
- A CD drive sled
- An ADB printer
- possibly a battery for the Powerbook
- a modem.
- a power adapter to use the powerbook separate from the duo dock. No
adapter was supplied, hence it will only operate in the dock.
I'd like to find a text only browser to use with it, and I was wondering if
I can get my old bubble jet printer from my Commodore Amiga to work with it.
That printer (Starjet SJ48, made in 1991) uses parallel ports to connect. Is
there a parallel/adb connector kit or something that I could use?
Failing that, I have an iMac, is there anyway to set up an AppleTalk between
the iMac and Powerbook duo?
Is early days yet and I'm still trying to find my feet with this machine. I
don't have the heart to throw this machine out that back in 1992 cost almost
�3,000. I know its only worth about $35 now but, well, its an old Apple
machine as well, and when we got our iMac in January 2001, one of the first
web sites I found (and still visit regularly), is Low End Mac. I know this
Powerbook can do plenty of things that people pay vast sums of money for in
today's PC's, and this powerbook I received free! that's why I want to give
it a second lease of life. It appears to be a good looking, competent
machine that deserves a second shot.
Well, that's all for now.
Thanks,
Matt
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