[neilw]

I've had two very strange (and, in one case, nearly catastrophic) power anomalies on my 2 year-old TiBook550. If anyone has any insight, I'd appreciate it.

First, a week or so ago, I was running on battery, was down to about 50%, then a short while later (like 15 minutes) it was suddenly showing 5%, and I ran and plugged it in. It should not have run that far down in that time. Up until then, the battery had been lasting normally.

Second, yesterday I was plugged in and recharging (probably at about 75%), and went to put the machine to sleep. Suddenly, it went dark. I mean *totally* dark. As far as I can tell, the machine shut down instantaneously. I went to lunch, and when I came back, it had restarted, but from my spare partition that I use for emergencies. My main partition was hopelessly corrupted; fortunately, DiskWarrior plus a recent backup I had made saved my bacon.

I can't help feeling these two incidents are related. These are the only such problems I've ever had with this machine. Generally, the battery seems OK, and the second incident occurred while the system was plugged in.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Crusoe]

For the first issue use it on battery till it gets well past 50% if it doesn't happen again it was probably my latter comment. If it does, time to buy a new battery and use this one as a backup.

On the older TiBooks the batter doesn't seat right or can come loose. The second it comes loose the power cuts off. It probably reset your system date to 1970 something as well right? Shut down pop it out and reset it with an nice solid click. I suspect just the shock of closing the screen wiggled it loose.

For losing the partition, I'm not sure, perhaps check you resetting the system time and restarting (if it reset to 1970 on the power loss).

[neilw]

Thanks. It does indeed appear my battery is shot. I've tried it a couple of times, and this time I just caught it: it drops from about 25% to 7% in a moment, yielding an overall battery life of less than an hour and a half. Time for a replacement I guess.

As for the other thing, I rechecked the battery seating, and it seemed OK, but maybe it had jostled loose. Guess I'll never know; hopefully it won't happen again.

[Mr Ti]

Interesting, I have 550 , I have used this machine for two years no problem, battery generaly lasted approx 2.5hrs. After I upgraded to 10.2.8 and now 10.3 I get 1.15 hrs.

Can't explain it. I have recalibrated several times but after a couple of recharges I get back to around a hour. I also get a loose battery, I guess this is why you had the blackout.

What OS are you using?

[neilw]

10.3.1. I just recalibrated, and am still showing about an hour usage time (if I'm lucky.) "ioreg -l" shows my battery capacity at 1196, which seems to be another way of saying "you need a new battery." I plan to get a new one when I get around to it; no rush though as I almost always run off wall power.

I'm not sure if my battery problems started with my 10.2.8 and/or Panther upgrades, honestly. I know I *used* to do a lot better than an hour, but I don't know exactly when it went south on me. I reset the power manager and recalibrated and it has had no effect.

[Mr Ti]

Interesting, I never knew about the terminal command, just ran it and I got

Capacity"=1211,"Amperage"=1200

so I guess my battery is due for replacement as well?

It was fully charged when I ran the command and plugged in.

Do I need to replace my battery?

[neilw]

Well, people in the "just got a new battery" thread are talking numbers in the 3500-5000 range, so around 1000 doesn't sound too good.

I don't know exactly how that number is arrived at, though, and I had never run it before I started having problems, so who knows.

I'd certainly like to be surer before dropping $130 on a new battery, but that's likely to be my eventual solution.