[Octo]

I have a Pismo and I replaced the battery about 4 months ago and everything has been fine until the last couple of weeks.

My battery is currently at 39% and not charging. If I unplug the AC, the powerbook keeps running. If I plug in the AC and remove the battery it keeps running. I replace the adapter about 2 years ago. I also tried reseting the powe manager, but to no avail. A couple of times, I have seen the battery start to charge, but it stops after raising a couple of percentage, not even close to a full charge.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can fix this and how I can test if something else is wrong?

Thanks

[Octo]

I discovered that if I remove the battery, wait a few minutes and reinsert it, it will charge a few percent and then stop. If I remove it once it has stopped charging, the connector is extremely warm and will only start charging again once it has cooled off. Also one side of the battery gets much warmer than the other.

Can anyone else with a Pismo or similiar model tell me if their battery connector gets really warm during charging?

Thanks

[Bill Eccles]

Uh, oh. You have the same problem I have.

My history runs like this:

I have a PBG3 (BK--Pismo) that I've had for years. I upgraded it to 10.2 and then 10.3. I did the 10.3 upgrade overnight and the following morning was intrigued to find the battery less than charged. So I rebooted, removed the battery, did all the power manager stuff, and... nothing.

I figured the next most likely component to die would be the PRAM battery. $40 later, still no change.

I called Apple because I had upgraded to 10.3 and got 90 days service for it--they suggested the battery's at fault. LiIon batteries do apparently die overnight like that. (I still don't believe it.) I bought a new aftermarket battery and got it two days ago.

$150 later, I am happy. The battery arrived at 80%, charges fully, and I sit with a Pismo on my lap, surfing wirelessly. (Sonnet Aria Extreme, by the way. Works well.)

But last night, I left it asleep and under the sofa (where it usually lives) and plugged in. This morning, the battery's lights report 50% charge and the PBG3 reports 33% charge and time to charge is again infinitely "Calculating..." forever.

Questions, then, that spring to mind:

1) Did you upgrade to 10.3 at any point in this process of having your battery die? Four months ago sounds very suspicious. If so, call Apple and gripe! You have 90 days from your first call (I think). Get another case into the system. The engineers just don't believe me.

2) Have you (or anyone else out there, for that matter) tried to replace the power management board? It's a $30 "fix," perhaps.

I'm getting really, really torqued off by this one. Especially after having dumped $150 into a new battery and discovering it ain't the battery after all. I guess if I ever get the thing working again, though, I'll have two working batteries again.

Bill

[Bill Eccles]

And one other thing... did you ever install that intermediate update? It was... hmmm... 10.2.8 that was released and then pulled and re-released? I did. On this machine. It caused battery problems with other PBs. Maybe this one, too?

[d_c_13]

Originally posted by Octo:
I have a Pismo and I replaced the battery about 4 months ago and everything has been fine until the last couple of weeks.

My battery is currently at 39% and not charging. If I unplug the AC, the powerbook keeps running. If I plug in the AC and remove the battery it keeps running. I replace the adapter about 2 years ago. I also tried reseting the powe manager, but to no avail. A couple of times, I have seen the battery start to charge, but it stops after raising a couple of percentage, not even close to a full charge.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can fix this and how I can test if something else is wrong?

Thanks

Did you recently update to 10.2.8 or Panther?
When I did the upgrade I had battery problems that the usual fixes didn't cure. What did cure my problems was updating my firmware to the latest version. You might want to check your Boot ROM Version in ASP and see if you have the latest version, which I think is 4.18f5.

[Bill Eccles]

I see just "f5" in boot ROM version.

And, oops, it turns out I have a Lombard, not a Pismo.

Any further clues would be appreciated.

[stevesnj]

Who did you get the battery from?

[Bill Eccles]

OK, you're not going to believe this...

I just installed from the original PBG3 restore CD and rebooted. Then I downloaded Battery Reset 2.0 from Apple. (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60655).

You'll never guess what happened.

OK, you might. The new battery started charging again! It is, by the way, a "Hi Capacity Power Products" battery and I got it from DS Miller for about $120, I think.

The original battery will still not charge.

Now, since I happen to have an HD with OSX Server 10.3.2 just waiting to be dropped in, I'll put it in and see what happens.

Yup. Still charging, even after 10.3.2 Server is loaded on the machine via HD swap.

So... still have your software restore CD?

I'm going to call and update Apple with this info. I think I've done a great job here and deserve a pat on the back. Not that they'll give me one, but I can try.



Bill

[Octo]

My Pismo reports 4.18f5 and my 'new' battery is a 'Hi Capacity Power Products' B-5899.

I'm going to try rebooting into classic and see what the behaviour is under classic. Then I will put my limited capacity original battery in over night to see how it behaves. I was only getting about an hours usage out of it, but at least it will fully charge and discharge without a problem.

If you have the same model of battery as I do, does it fit into the right media bay? My original battery does, but the replacement doesn't.

[rcowan]

I have pretty much the same experience with my pismo. After I got the new battery it did recharge for a while, then the lightning rod over the battery in the menu bar would come and go when the battery should be charging. Now it never appears.
Now MyBattery shows 42%; and says it, and the system, think the battery is charging.
I have tried reseting the PMU, both with the reset button, and by unplugging the PRAM battery from it for a few seconds.
I have also done the open firmware tricks as advertised.
No change.
This is starting to sound like the PMU circuit is dead. Anyone have any experience here?
I am running OS 9.2.2.

[Bill Eccles]

That's actually my next step here. Granted, the PMUs of the Pismo and Lombard are different and we may be comparing Apples and, um, Apples, but I'll let you know what I find out.

I talked to Apple again day before yesterday and they were still adamant that it is a hardware issue pointing out that the Classic OSs are much more tolerant of hardware problems than the OSX environment is. So, though I hate to do it, I am going to step through the iterations of 10 and see where it begins to break--if it does. After all, I do have a working system right now and that's good....

Bill

[rcowan]

Unfortunately, Battery Reset doesn't work on the Pismo. So we don't have that avenue of hope.

[rcowan]

Having retrieved my old battery from my office, I tried it. It will charge! (though it only lasts for a few minutes without the AC adapter plugged in). Nonetheless it does charge, and apart from the fact that it is dead and won't hold the charge, appears tobehave normally. The lightning bolt appears, and MYBattery looks normal.

This now sounds like a problem with the new battery. I got it from 2Power in England about 2 months ago.

Incidentally, I could get the new battery to go into the right hand bay. I had to force it a bit, but it does go, and then its behaviour is the same as when it is in the left bay.

[Octo]

Okay I contacted the retailer that I got my battery from and I was told to send it in to be tested. It turned out to be bad and I got a new battery.

Now after a couple of months of almost no charge/discharge cycles, the battery won't hold a charge. Does anybody have a way that I can get more information out of my system that will tell me what is happening with the charging system on my laptop?

My old original battery still charges, but only works for 10-15 minutes once I remove the AC.

[fisherKing]

interesting thread...
i noticed by pismo battery showed a full charge after updating to panther...
of about an hour (about half of what it used to be).

i assumed my battery was dying, now i am wondering if there's something bigger going on here...