duo nightmare

[Mason]

Hello...    I have been reading this list for about two weeks now and 
it seems that all everyone has is 2400s. I have acquired a 2300c Duo 
and have recently bought a DuoDock from Ebay.  The Duo itself would 
boot up to the point where I got the unknown disk icon on the screen, 
but only when plugged in (bad battery I assume). I do not have an Apple 
type display, but have an adapter to hook up a regular VGA screen to 
it. When I put the Duo in the Dock, nothing happens, except once, 
inexplicably, the Dock grabbed onto it and attempted to boot, then spat 
it out again.  During all this, nothing appeared on the display, even 
after I had gone through every jumper setting on it (there are four 
jumpers on the adapter) Any ideas how I may be able to get this up and 
running?  At this point that is the main quest, I really have no idea 
what I am going to do with this after that.

Oh yeah, and I heard that some early MacOS versions are in the public 
domain now, is there anywhere one can download them?

Thanks all.

Mason