Clint's 3 Duos

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Mendelson:

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> Not familiar with the Duos, do they have a PCMCIA
> slot?

Unfortunately, they do not. The Duos had a single combined 
printer/LocalTalk port and a proprietary processor direct slot (PDS) 
connector for "docking." The PDS slot could be mated to proprietary 
adapters to support SCSI and similar interfaces (this was all before 
PCMCIA, Cardbus, and the like). The only input or output (including 
bootable or removable media) had to be through one of those two connectors.

Apple moved in the direction of a less proprietary sub-notebook with the 
brief-lived PowerBook 2400. The 2400 weighed only 2 kg, and had no 
internal floppy or CD-ROM drive. It did, however, have a Type III PC 
card slot, and would be a better candidate for what you are proposing. I 
would be interested in one myself, except it was reportedly dog slow 
with a 180 MHz PPC 603e processor.

> You could also network them using IP over appletalk.
> Around 1990 I built a router out of a 286 pc and two
> etherent cards to let my SE/30 connect to an rs/6000.
> There were similar devices for localtalk and at least
> one software package. I think in the end it was
> released for free by Apple.

That sounds like a better approach. However, it still needs some sort of 
hardware (possibly Mr. Payne's Power Mac 9100) to mate the LocalTalk 
wires to an Ethernet network.

> I think there was a version of Netscape that would run on them, but
> you may find problems due to the "improved" version of javascript now
> in use.

Don't expect too much in the way of a "modern" browsing experience, but 
it can be done. The 680x0 version of iCab that I mentioned in my earlier 
post might have limited Javascript support.

Good luck!

Best wishes,
Clint
(who notes that the 2400c goes for about US$150-200 on eBay -- Must... 
resist... eBay...)

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>