[MuyMalo1]

I bought my iBook in April '03, experienced total screen meltdown in the Fall that year. I believe they had to change the video processor?? or something related.

Mac fixed it at no cost. However, the same thing happened again in the Fall of '4 and '05. The Genius Bar reps could only confirmed the problem 3 out of the 5 times I had this problem.

They tried to make me paid for the repairs this last time, but I found that Apple is aware of the problem and has a service plan that covers this type of repair up to 3 years since purchase. However, repairs are only guaranteed for 90 days, meaning that I'll be on my own if this happens again next Fall.

I'm very dissapointed, because I was told at the Apple store that they've never seen this problem reoccurring once fixed. After the second time my machine was "fixed" my battery went from lastine nearly 5 hours to 45 minutes at 100%. Nothing chaged from my perspective except that I added an Airport card. No one seems to know what has happened to my battery. I've tried to drain it completely, before recharging and nothing seems seems to inmprove. What is the life span for these batteries anyway?... Help!

V.
iBook G3, OS 10.2.8, 640MB, 900Mhz, SDRAM 512MB

[frdmfghtr]

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

(1) Did the screen brightness get turned up all the way? I don't know how fast a screen at 100% brightness will kill a battery (I haven't had the urge to try it)

(2) Try removing the AirPort card and see if that changes anything. Did the battery problem occur before or after the Airport card was added?

You can download XBattery (http://www.kezer.net/xbattery.html) and see what the current draw is on the battery, to see if there is excessive current being pulled or if perhaps the battery went bad coincident to the repairs. It is also possible that the repair caused another problem, perhaps a high resistance ground path somewhere that's causing the short battery life.

That's what immediately comes to mind.

[MuyMalo1]

Thanx frdmfghtr,

I always set my screen from 10-50% and have the both power settings set to automatic. I will try your suggestions.

V.

[mduell]

You have a G3 iBook, and your problem sounds like the well known/documented logic board failure. You're covered indefinately against this problem under the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program. Some people report having their G3 iBook logic board replaced many times.