Hard Drive for a PowerBook 210?

Drives that worked in those older PowerBooks were discontinued a long time ago. Later PowerBooks had to use IDE drives because there were no more small SCSI drives.

The 2.5 inch SCSI drives that are available today are unlikley to work in that PowerBook. But an external SCSI enclosure with a small Vintage 50-pin desktop drive in it should still work fine. I know that's not the answer you want for a portable.

This is a Powerbook 210 Duo, right? I can't find any mention of a plain Powerbook 210.

http://groups.google.com/group/lemswap is also a good place to try since people there are specifically dealing with old Mac parts.

One clue to compatibility will be capacity. Your computer came with an 80 MB drive so we're not talking anything like a 34GB drive in terms of replacement! Maybe something on the order of a couple of hundred MB at most I'd guess.

If this is the PB Duo then I don't think an external drive will work unless you also have the dock into which the computer fits. The laptop itself doesn't have any standard external SCSI connectors. http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/ads/ads/laptop/pbduo210specs2.jpg Since you'd be tied to using an external with the computer in desktop configuration then the extra hardware shouldn't make too much difference.

Are you in a place with a Craigslist? You could maybe post a Want To Buy. I know that I used to have a lot of old Mac parts in the basement. I posted on Craigslist and immediately got several responses from people wanting free stuff. Uh, they kind of looked like guys who probably had even more junk parts in their basement than I did when I started. 😁 Anyway, there may be people who have similar in your area and don't bother trying to sell (like me) but might have an old drive (I have a few SCSI standard size).

Limnos, I think you are onto something.

Here is a description of the Hardware offered in the PowerBook duo210:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/stats/mac_powerbook_duo210.h tml

An 80 MB laptop drive is standard, and no explicit external SCSI connector..

And this description of the DuoDock:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/stats/mac_powerbook_duodock. html

The 230MB SCSI drive in the dock may in fact be a much larger and much more common 3.5 inch DESKTOP drive. Those are still available on the used market.

I agree that the breakpoint between older SCSI drives and more modern ones is at a few hundred megabytes. Beyond that size, no "narrow" laptop drives were ever made, and larger drives will tend to have 68-pin or 80-pin "wide" interfaces that will not work properly without adapters.

nocr,

I guess I was asleep on this one. Where in the world are you located? If you are near Seattle, WA, you have options. I have some in the basement, docks and complete working units so I can test things out. The dock and the high density SCSI adapter are the first two things to look for. Then any drive will work. Take an old SCSI CD-ROM drive apart, take out the optical drive and put in any 50 pin SCSI drive and you are good to go.

Ji~m

I doubt that hard drive will work. For one thing those PowerBooks tended to top out around 750mb to 1gb if I recall. Plus that connector looks like a standard UW from the 3.5" drives which is not the same as the 50 pin connectors on the original PB 210 Duos.