Duo Dock II problem

Is it making a ticking noise (typical with Duodock ps failure)? Google 'Duodock Tick of Death' and all will be revealed. It's an easy enough fix: took me less than an hour to dismantle, replace one capacitor, and reassemble. I have another one here now that I need to perform the same surgery on.

The one I had didn't have any signs of life like fans or chimes, it just did the tick and nothing else, though it could be that the "tick of death" can manifest itself in different ways. You shouldn't have to throw it away though - I was worried I was going to have to dump it but then someone in Portugal paid the £40 cost of shipping it over there, dead and all!

I am not getting rid of it. My next move is to pull the power supply from

from the other one and keep swaping parts till I find a bad one.

Are the p/s and floppy drive inter-changeable with any other Mac?

I'm pretty sure the power supply is not interchangeable with other Macs; that is why this tick thing is so bad as it can only be realistically fixed by replacing the faulty capacitor inside the existing power supply, meaning that most Duo Docks will sadly get thrown away. I might have kept mine had it been as easy as swapping in another power supply.

Macster is right...the power supply used in the Duo Docks is unique to the Duo Docks...you can't use a PSU from another Mac in a Duo Dock nor can you use a Duo Dock PSU in another Mac.

Obviously, if swapping in the other power supply does not cure the problem, then it isn't the power supply that is the problem (if you know what I mean).

As for the PS fix, it is not a difficult business - nothing near as hard as replacing the capacitors on a logic board. All you need is the instructions I listed, the best part of an hour, a power drill with a 1/8" or so metal drill bit, and a soldering iron/flux/solder. Piece of cake. Really.

The reason why swapping in the other PSU wouldn't fix the problem is that chances are they both probably have the same problem with the dodgy capacitor. Most remaining working Duo Docks have usually had this problem fixed.

Swapped the top 1/2 of non-working unit onto the bottom 1/2 of the working p/s. It works. The hd and fpu are reconized. So the p/s on the other unit is faulty. Will have to repair it.

There is a ram chip on the motherboard. Is it upgradeable?

IIRC that's a VRAM stick, for the external monitor. It is upgradable if you find a compatible one thats larger. IIRC they take the same 68 pin VRAM SIMMs used on other Macs.

The ram in the slot is a 68pin simm and looks exactly like the ram chips in a Mac II fx. Are you saying that the vram cips from a beige g3 will fit?

Not a Beige G3, they use a different type of VRAM. The sticks i'm talking about are those that are found in the following models:

Any pizzabox LC

Any Quadra

Any NuBus PowerMac with HPV card

Apple-branded NuBus graphics cards (and some others)