I just scored a great deal on eBay. The item is a Macintosh HDI-20 external floppy disk drive from 1991. It was originally released for the PowerBook 100 which did not include an internal floppy drive but was revived a couple of years later for the PowerBook Duo series of notebooks that also did not include a floppy drive. The Duo series was similar in concept to the PowerBook 2400c and MacBook Air models – no removable media drive and few external connections in return for a reduction in size and weight. The Duo was known for its ability to connect to one of several docks that added additional ports, connections, and even disk drives.
I have one such Duo in my collection (a Duo 2300c – the last Duo model produced and the only one to ship with a PowerPC processor) it requires not only the external floppy drive but an additional “floppy adapter” to go with it. Finding both of these on eBay is difficult and they are usually expensive. The adapter alone can go for almost $200 and the floppy can fetch up to $40. I need one in order to install an OS update that I can’t install using its LocalTalk port. I’ve been tracking the drives and adapters for a few months and bid on a few but had no luck. I came across a listing for both the drive and the adapter a few days ago and was lucky to win it this evening for nine dollars. Nine dollars! Plus another nine to ship it. I was the only bidder, which was surprising due to their popularity.
It just goes to show that persistence on eBay can get you a good deal.
Relatively Ambitious 