[DuoList] Powerbook Duo 280c inquiry

[Richard Bennet]

Hi - yes that is a cool little duo. To try to answer
some of your ?'s: 1) If you boot up the machine using
the AC adapter, and the time and date are relatively
correct, then your Pram battery is still OK. 2) the
only limitation on the "battery tools" disk will be
the operating system it requires. Try it! Nothing will
be hurt if it won't work - it will tell you so. 3) I
have it on good authority from "the powerbook guy"
that the "battery reconditioner" from Apple will
indeed work - on approx. 10% of the batteries tried.
He has tried everything, but the best answer is 'only
sometimes'. 4) It may be possible to download the
battery program from the Apple website. Or someone
'out there' can help. 5) upgrading the OS can always
be beneficial. Your Duo can run on OS 8.1 - the limit
-  but I doubt it would run on 12 megs of ram. Not
sure about that. I  recently bought a 36 meg ram card
on ebay quite cheap - it is always a good idea to
expand memory.  Your duo can take up to 40 meg of ram.
I don't know how much you are into Macs, but the #1
info source for Macs of any vintage is lowendmac.com.
Check it out. Also - shrevesystems.com has the Apple
duo dock Plus for 29.95. This turns your baby into a
desktop unit, with exterior monitor, floppy drive,
scsi, serial, ADB, and modem ports! I bought one for
my duo 230 - it is the coolest. You can add an
external scsi cdrom drive, too. (But it is as big as a
G3 desktop unit!) enjoy.

richbennetlaf at sbcglobal.net

--- "The IdeaStudio, LLC" <ideastudio at cox.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I recently came into possession of a Powerbook Duo
> 280c - quite the cool
> little Mac. 
> 
> A few things:
> 
> (1) Configuration is 12/320, system OS 7.5.1 -
> here's the dilemna, there's
> no "battery monitor" application on the machine. I
> cannot check the status
> of the 2 batteries that came with the Pbook - see
> below. In the "control
> strip" folder there's a "battery monitor" file, but
> when I go to open it the
> "original file cannot be found" error comes up.
> Apparently the unit hasn't
> been used in years - probably packed inside some
> dark crawlspace waiting for
> that day to be resurrected by a Mac faithful.
> 
> (2) There is a "Battery Tools" floppy - can that be
> used to check the
> batteries?
> 
> (3) I've kept the power supply connected to the
> laptop for several hours,
> only to disconnect it, and find out the machine does
> not boot up. This is
> probably a good indicator that the batteries are no
> longer usable.
> 
> (4) Can the PRAM battery be dead and need replacing?
> 
> If there's a way to recharge these batteries, please
> let me know. I hope
> someone out there can give me some assistance. Thank
> you.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> John
> 
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