Apple PowerBook Duo: The Laptop That Was Also a Desktop

hey everyone it's colin how's it going in the 90s laptops were usually big and heavy but in 1992 apple launched a series of machines that was anything but and they had an extra trick up their sleeve [Music] [Music] this is a macintosh powerbook duo 270c i picked it up with a few other accessories and it's overall in good cosmetic condition when i got it there was something a little off about this corner of the lid it looked like the display housing popped apart and here's why this thing must have been dropped as i found the display was cracked the computer still powered on and even the backlight worked so i set out to fix it i started by peeling the screw covers off with a craft knife these are unfortunately very thin and i tried not to damage them in the service manual these are called out as being disposable and they should just be replaced with new ones when removed but good luck finding some new ones in 2020 i took out the t6 screws under those covers then closed the lid and popped the back housing free the front edge has tabs that clip it to the screen bezel and these were all in good shape i did find one set of hooks by the latch assembly that had snapped off but thankfully the rest were still fine i then removed this tape securing the foil shielding and took out the t8 screws holding the screen in peeling back the shielding revealed the screen's part number its model lq9d0 originally made by sharp that lcd panel isn't being made anymore but i managed to find a few ebay listings for used or refurbished ones from sellers in china one thing i noted was that they all had the letter a at the end of their part numbers i figured that referred to a small production revision and since the panels in the pictures looked just like the broken one from my duo i bought one it took several weeks to arrive but the replacement screen was packaged very well while it was sold as refurbished it looked to be in good condition i got the old panel removed from the power book next the inverter board needed to be unscrewed so i could disconnect the backlight cable and another flat flex ribbon then i got the display signal cable disconnected with the help of a spudger and carefully peeled it from the back of the screen it had been stuck down with some double-sided tape and since i had removed the screws earlier the broken display simply lifted out and this is the point where i encountered a major problem the new panel didn't fit i could get the screw holes to line up on the left side but the right sides stuck out past the edge of the display housing and comparing the screens the new one wasn't just longer but taller too i suspected that perhaps the difference was just in the dimensions of the metal outer housing and there was only one way to find out the back of the display was held on with a few phillips head screws around the outside and after those were out i could lift it off but when i did the same to the new screen and lined them up i found that their inner plastic frames were different sizes too i decided to disassemble them further these metal tabs got bent flat then i could flip the whole thing over and remove the front housing there are pcbs around the perimeter with flat flex cables that attach to the glass layers of the screen this is what activates the matrix of pixels each flex segment has a controller chip soldered directly to it and the pcbs underneath are glued to the frame it would have been difficult to remove everything without causing damage and it's probably just as well because it turns out those pcbs were different sizes too there was just no way to get this new screen to work in the power book the way these older lcds are constructed makes it a lot easier to understand how they operate there's a thin fluorescent tube running along one edge that makes up the backlight on the back of the screen is a clear acrylic layer that has a fine texture on one side to help disperse the light evenly towards the front underneath that are two more layers to better diffuse the light the screen itself is otherwise clear when the liquid crystals are showing white and the polarizing layers on this display are sandwiched inside the glass layers so why doesn't this screen fit did i order the wrong one i looked at the auction listing again and it indeed was for an lq 9d041a but then i took a closer look at the part number on the actual panel i was sent and it said lq 941a no zero the seller i bought it from must have overlooked the difference and sent me the wrong one it's annoying that sharp would have made two different panels with such similar part numbers but even more frustrating was that it took so long for this one to ship and for me to start on this project that my window to return it had expired i still wanted to fix the duo after watching listings for a while i saw one pop up for a used lcd that had exactly the same part number as my original no a suffix so i rolled the dice and bought it it came from a different seller but something was seeming oddly familiar while i was unpacking it the box and bubble wrap were the same the blue anti-static bag was the same and after i got a glance at the part number are you kidding me yup it had that a suffix was this screen gonna work was it another one that wouldn't fit thankfully my worry was misplaced despite the slightly different part number the original panel and this one were exactly the same size and all the mounting locations were in the same places so it took two tries but at least i now had an lcd that should work i set it into the display housing then got to work reconnecting the cables everything went back together as it should the screws all lined up and the foil shield fit back on just fine before buttoning it up i wanted to give it a test so i opened the screen connected the ac adapter and the machine sprung to life and the display thankfully lit up there was one problem though and it wasn't with the screen yeah the machine wasn't finding an operating system to boot from because the hard drive was dying that's becoming a common problem with vintage laptops especially and it's something i'd need to deal with next but first a visit from an old nemesis brittle plastic i found that the screw standoffs on the display's back housing were cracking around their brass inserts if i didn't do anything about it they'd likely snap off so i applied a generous amount of super glue to hopefully hold them together i've done this before on laptop screens and it's always worked well so i left it to dry overnight after the glue cured i could carefully reinstall the housing sliding it on from the front then working it around the hinge covers and snapping it down the screws went back in just fine and when i tightened them down they felt strong so it seemed like the glue had done the trick though they were supposed to be disposable i had to figure out how to reuse the screw covers what i ended up doing was applying some double-sided tape to their backs then cutting it to size with a craft knife i pressed them into place with the help of a spudger and while they definitely didn't look brand new i could live with them they're certainly better than seeing the screw heads the machine had been putting marks all over my work mat and that's because the rubber feet on the bottom were disintegrating into a sticky goo this is another common problem with retrotech so i used the flat side of a spudger to scrape out the bulk of the mess then took care of what remained with an alcohol wipe okay time to tackle that hard drive i pulled the battery out of the duo then flipped it over and removed the four torx screws from the bottom three holding the keyboard and a fourth fastens down the top case next i open the screen and carefully slid off the hinge covers they just snap into place and weren't too tough but i still had to be careful not to break them again finding replacements would be difficult at best i flipped the keyboard over onto the palm rest and disconnected its pair of flex cables the top and bottom housing snaps together inside the battery compartment so i got them separated and then i could lift the top case up and wiggle it free i noticed that a couple of the loops that the top case hooks into were broken on the right side it's possible i accidentally did this when removing it but it's also possible i'm not the first person inside this machine the hard drive is covered by this blue shield so i got its screws taken out next underneath was a quantum daytona model 514s it's a 4500 rpm two and a half inch scuzzy drive i disconnected its interface ribbon from the motherboard then the drive lifted out with its mounting bracket on closer inspection it looks like this hard drive isn't original it's 500 megabytes in capacity about twice as big as the 240 meg drive the 270c shipped with it's also missing an apple logo sticker signifying it as an original part so i'd gotten the broken drive out but what was i going to replace it with included in a lot of powerbook duo parts i picked up from my friends over at freegeek twin cities was a sorry looking duo 280. its display was also smashed it was missing its keyboard and lots of its plastics were either cracked or had asset tag information scratched into him i'm pretty sure this had been someone else's parts machine too but out of curiosity i tried powering it on anyway and yeah it's dead no signs of life at all it felt kind of heavy in the front even without a battery so i took the top cover off and peeled back the foil to find an original hard drive still in here there was a good chance this one wouldn't work either due to age or abuse but i figured it'd be worth a shot it's likely the one that originally came with the 280 an apple branded 250 meg unit manufactured by connor i dropped it into the 270c but before committing to reassembling the powerbook i tested it first and not long after starting up the machine began to boot from the drive it seemed to be working just fine this also gave me my first good look at the new screen the backlight was nice and bright and there weren't any obvious dead pixels the hard drive clearly hadn't been wiped that's something i definitely need to do but it did let me check how much ram the machine had 12 megabytes in total these came with four megs soldered to the motherboard so this one had an 8 meg upgrade nice with the drive installed and working i could finally get the machine reassembled for good you might be wondering what was the deal with this computer anyway what was its purpose laptops up until that point tended to be a bit cumbersome while they were certainly portable they weren't all that convenient to carry around due to their size and weight some manufacturers like toshiba and ibm tried to make small laptops either by cutting out features or by coming up with creative ways to shrink their footprints but while these so-called sub-notebooks were easier to travel with they didn't work well when their owners were back in the office they weren't comfortable to use at a desk for very long and a lot of times their small size also required that performance take a back seat the powerbook duo was apple's attempt at addressing all of those concerns the first models in the series the duo 210 and 230 launched in october of 1992. they featured passive matrix black and white screens and came by default with 4 megabytes of ram and an 80mag hard drive the difference between them was just their processor speed 25 megahertz for the 210 and 33 megahertz for the 230 but both of those used motorola 68030 cpus which were contemporary for other macs at the time they weren't the fastest machines but there wasn't much performance penalty due to their size what really set the duo series apart though was what its name was a reference to both apple and third parties sold a few options for docking stations so the machines could be used in a desktop setup and owners would want to own at least one of them because in order to get the machines so slim there were hardly any ports on board hidden behind the fold down feet on one side was a serial port for a printer and on the other an optional 14 4 fax modem and that was it other than the power adapter socket any other connections had to be made using a dock through this big connector behind the flip up door a common dock was also the smallest called a micro dock they typically had ports for a floppy drive and adb to connect a keyboard and mouse these were great for traveling though bringing a bunch of accessories like an external floppy drive did kinda defeat the purpose of buying a sub notebook people who use their duo at a desk regularly could spring for a mini dock instead these offered a much bigger complement of ports floppy and adb of course but also video out two serial ports scuzzy for an external hard disk or cd-rom audio jacks and a pass-through for the modem these docks also made switching between portable and office use pretty easy as the machine simply latched into it but there was one option that truly turned a duo into a desktop the full size duo dock this one came as part of the lot i was given by free geek it had clearly been sitting for a while and needed a good cleaning these docks had the same selection of ports as the mini dock but in a desktop style case you could stack a monitor on top of docking the laptop was a slick process as a motorized mechanism pulled it inside you can also lock it with a key so no one could walk away with your laptop and an external floppy drive wasn't necessary as one was built into the right side the level of expandability that the dock offered was also impressive most laptop docking stations were simply port replicators extending the connections from circuitry inside the laptop itself but the duo docks were more like extensions of the computer's motherboard that big connector didn't just pass power audio and other typical signals it also offered direct access to the duo's cpu the docs motherboard held an optional motorola 6882 math coprocessor to speed up floating point calculations and to better help drive the external monitor it also included a 512k video ram module which doubled the total vram in the system there were even two nubus expansion slots for things like network or video cards i noticed something a bit weird with this power cable there's a bunch of electrical tape in the middle and this ribbon cable has a strange extender on it neither of these seemed factory so i decided to disassemble the dock further to investigate i loosened a few captive screws in the middle then the entire mid frame could slide forward and lift out and flipping it over reveals one more expansion option an additional hard drive this was an optional upgrade for the dock which came with a 230 megabyte disk but something seemed a little off here the scuzzy ribbon cable looks like it's been used before and i found that the drive was wedged into its mounting tabs using a chunk of wood i suspected that this dock originally came without a drive and its owner hacked one in at some point peeling the suspicious tape off the power cable pretty much confirmed this ah yes the old twist and tape method they must have had experience installing car stereos too i couldn't leave it like this so i soldered the wires and insulated them with some heat shrink tubing they're much better that chunk of wood wasn't welcome either so i 3d printed a bracket and got the drive properly snapped into place this drive is really interesting it's had its original label replaced with one that declares the manufacturer's warranty is void but doesn't indicate where it's from my best guess is a computer recycler or company that refurbished used hard drives also in grease pencil on one corner is the number 195 it's written in a way that suggests it was a price a 1.95 for a quantum scuzzy drive having the mid frame out also gives a good look at the ethernet card it's an original apple nubus network adapter it supports 10 megabit connections through the aaui port on the back the idea was that you'd connect a transceiver to whatever cabling type you were using like 10 base 2 thin net or 10 base t twisted pair they weren't cheap either with the card costing 350 dollars and the transceivers going for about 150 bucks each ethernet was a big deal in the early 90s and 10 megabit connections were considered very fast this card used a 10 megahertz motorola 68 000 cpu to handle the network traffic that means this card offered more performance than the mac classic from october 1990. with the drive sorted i got the duo dock put back together even though it wasn't really meant to be worked on by owners there's still a surprising amount of serviceability to it i could then turn my attention to one other item that came with the dock and broken duo 280 another duo machine but one that got me excited as soon as i flipped it over it's a duo 2300c the last model in the series and the only one to include a powerpc processor this model launched in late 1995 and included megahertz power pc 603e along with 8 megabytes of ram and a 750 meg or 1.1 gig ide hard drive its screen was slightly larger than the 270 and 280cs at 9.5 inches but otherwise the only difference in its external appearance from those models is its use of a track pad instead of a trackball the machine was overall in good shape but like with the 270c the bottom feet were turning to goo and needed to get cleaned up there was also an identification sticker that had long since faded that i peeled off and on a front corner some familiar writing this time it's in red grease pencil and says 6.95 no cord and if there's any doubt that's a price this other sticker should eliminate it yup this one had been sold by a thrift store just like the hard drive from the duo dock the price of about seven bucks for this duo blows my mind it must have been sold many years ago these days 2300s go for several hundred dollars on ebay just my luck though i did find a problem with this machine there's a gap in the rear display housing at the back which means there's something wrong with the hinges sure enough the rear display panel simply lifted off the screen assembly and flipping it over revealed what i suspected the plastic screw standoffs had broken this is what i was trying to prevent in the 270c when i applied the super glue but it's too late for this machine the threaded metal inserts stayed fast into the screws in the front housing and i needed to remove them i learned my lesson with the 270c not to use a craft knife on the screw covers and instead sanded down the flat edge of a spudger to make it thinner this worked much better at peeling the covers off with much less risk of damaging them then i could use a pair of pliers to hold the inserts in place while undoing the screws with a torx driver these standoffs are too far gone to glue back together even if i had all the broken pieces so it's 3d printing to the rescue again i designed some replacement standoffs that would hopefully prove to be much sturdier than the originals on one end they had to follow the curve of the rear display housing and i was happy to see that i got that part right i also got the height to be the same because otherwise the back might not sit flush when it's installed then i had to do something that i knew was necessary but still felt unnerving i got out my flush cutters and snipped away the remaining bits of the broken standoffs there was no going back now my solution needed to work i sanded down what i couldn't get with the cutters until i ended up with a perfectly flat surface i used a ruler and marker to draw exactly where the standoffs used to be and applied some super glue to the area then i got a standoff positioned into place it was a little fiddly getting it exactly right so i'm glad i didn't use any accelerator with the glue the other side went exactly the same way and i left it for a day to let the glue dry putting threads in plastic is usually iffy at best so my plan was to reuse the metal inserts i designed the hole in the standoffs to be slightly smaller than the inserts and i used my soldering iron to heat the metal up and melt them into place i can't recall exactly where i learned this trick but they worked exceptionally well i got the rear housing put back on and carefully snapped it down around the hinge covers to my relief the screws threaded in as they should that means i aligned the standoffs correctly when i glued them in but then the head on the right screw snapped off thankfully the brake wasn't flush with the insert so i was able to use a pair of locking pliers to grab on to what was left and back it out i tried to pilfer a replacement screw from that duo 280 parts machine but found that it was unfortunately too short and that's because the screens on the color duos are a bit thicker so off to the hardware store to see if they had a replacement and to my surprise they did instead of a torx bit it uses a flathead driver which is annoying but it worked just fine in the duo and that's all that really matters i got the screw covers reinstalled then on to the ultimate test does the machine actually work i plugged it in and it powered on then proceeded to boot what a relief it's running mac os 8 and also got an upgrade to 20 megabytes of ram at some point the hard drive is also the larger 1.1 gig unit that was offered and based on some file date stamps it looks like this computer was used up until the end of 1998 and with them now working the only thing left to do to both of these machines was wipe the drives and reinstall the os maybe not as satisfying of a task but always less nerve-wracking than dealing with brittle plastic or hard to find parts i've always thought the duo series was a really cool idea being able to take your desktop computer and make it instantly portable and for the early 90s it certainly was impressive the problem is not many people bought into it but being the key word here because everything about these laptops was expensive when they debuted the duo 210 and 230 sold respectively for 2250 and 2600 u.s and that was just for the laptop itself the full-size dock went for about a thousand bucks and even the mini dock went for almost 600 add in the cost of a monitor keyboard mouse and other accessories and the desktop setup could run you almost as much as the laptop did perhaps unsurprisingly by the middle of 1993 only an estimated hundred thousand duos had been sold apple dropped prices on the 210 and 230 pretty significantly later that year you could get it 210 for as low as 1400 bucks but new models announced around the same time remained expensive the 270c with an upgraded 12 megs of ram sold for 3 500 when it launched and the grayscale duo 250 started at 2500 but other than an active matrix lcd it was actually the same as the 230. now that's not to say you didn't get a quality experience from the duo series they only weighed about four pounds which was significantly less than the seven to eight of most other laptops so they certainly delivered on their promise of portability there were lots of little touches geared towards road warriors as well like how the ac adapter could have an optional battery charger snapped onto it for recharging a pair of extra packs those batteries also came with their own neat little storage cases and used the relatively new nickel metal hydride chemistry which offered between two and four hours of life depending on use and ultimately it really was those road warriors that jumped on board with the duo series people who would spend significant amounts of time traveling for work this is evidenced by this asset tag on the bottom of my 270c indicating that it used to belong to john deere the tractor company it was likely used by a sales rep or engineer visiting with customers and dealers throughout the us this was the perfect use case for the duo and the high price was likely deemed worth it to the company because of the productivity it offered [Music] but for personal use these laptops were just too expensive while a select few power users would have indeed saved money by getting a duo instead of separate laptop and desktop computers a lot of potential buyers felt like they were getting nickeled and dimed by all the accessories they'd have to pick up apple did try to lessen the sting a little bit by offering upgrades between models in the series for example if you bought a duo 230 but later wanted the faster performance of the 280 you could buy an upgrade kit that came with a replacement bottom case and motherboard for less than what a new 280 would have cost there was even an upgrade kit to go to the duo 2300 but the resulting machine ended up as a kind of frankenstein since the original screen and trackball assembly was reused but the upgrade that didn't quite make sense was the one for the 270c to install that kit you'd swap the keyboard trackball and hard drive and that's it the kit was really just the complete laptop without those few parts i can't imagine one saved much money this way but maybe it's the thought that counts and in some ways that sentiment was apple's modus operandi throughout much of the 90s while it certainly had some productive and popular computers in its lineup other machines seemed like a solution in search of a problem sadly to many potential buyers the duo series fell into this category but i think even they would admit that in the very least the powerbook duo was a pretty neat idea if you liked the video i'd appreciate a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe you can follow me on social media at this does not comp and as always thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: This Does Not Compute

Views: 382,131

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Id: rJUZAahpqRQ

Length: 30min 41sec (1841 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020