Have there been any responses to this yet? If so, then I apologize for
bringing it up again.
I have not seen any responses, so I'll give it shot.
First, what is the age of your battery? I have/had two batteries for my
Pismo and they both lasted just over four years (consecutive years, not
sequential years). So if your battery is around that age, then it is
probably done and just a case of bad timing.
Both my batteries started the dying process while I was running 10.2.
When I upgraded to 10.3 my batteries gave the same performance as with
10.2, which was continuously dying at a faster and faster rate and less
"charge up" percentage and time with each charging session.
I first noticed the weakening batteries when they would only charge to
80%. The OS X battery monitor was not always accurate, sometimes
reporting 80% charge sometimes reporting 100% charge. I tried all the
tricks and resets, nothing helped. The battery would get down to 20%
then just jump straight to 0% and the Pismo would go to sleep. Now I am
getting only about 40% charge on these batteries. So the behavior now
is that when the battery gauge gets down to 40% it will then jump to 0%
and the Pismo goes to sleep. I still keep a battery in the bay, in case
of a power loss, so that I'll have about 20-30 minutes to close, quit,
and shut down properly.
A battery generally does not go from 100% charge down to 0% in an
instant. Has your battery been weakening over time? My batteries seem
to weaken in 20% steps (maybe as each cell in the battery fails and
each cell in the battery is worth 20%?).
If it did go from 100% to 0% charge, then the sensor in the battery
itself has been triggered somehow and needs to be reset. That is done
through Terminal and booting into Open Firmware. If you want to try
that, then let me know and I will find the instructions for you.
Here is how to check the stats of a battery using Terminal...
Open Terminal (located in your applications > utilities folder)
and run the following command
" ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo"
the response will look like this
"IOBatteryInfo" =
({"Capacity"=4144,"Amperage"=1200,"Current"=160,"Voltage"=11431,"Flags"=
1090519175})
if it is not plugged into the wall, then the flags will equal a
regular # like 4.
A "good" Capacity number in my opinion is from 4000 to 4500.
Running that just now on my Pismo returns a battery capacity of 402!
Yikes! So my battery is only capable of 10% charge at this point.
Also, here is a link to a web page that offers some good tips on
battery life: http://www.enterprisej2me.com/blog/java/?postid=90.
So I hope all that helps. Have a great day!
Best regards,
Scott
g'day,
the battery in my pismo (powerbook g3 firewire) has just died (m7318)
and i
wondered if it
has anything to do with the recent os upgrade i performed (10.2 to
10.3)?
everything was fine until i upgraded a couple of weeks ago and now
it's as
dead as a dodo.
is this a strange coincedence or just a case of bad timing?
are there any tests in os x i can perform to see if it has really died
or if
it's something else?
i can't run apple's battery reset 2.0 as i no longer have classic on my
machine due to
storage constraints.
i'm just about to buy a quicksilver (powermac g4) and can't really
afford to
replace the
battery yet. does it matter if leave the battery left in the slot
until i
have sufficient funds to
obtain a replacement or should i remove it completely?
finally can anyone recommend a good replacement for the m7318 that
holds
around 5-6 hours of charge as most of the one's i've seen on the web
only
seem to last for 2-3 hours?
cheers,
simon
09/06
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
-- Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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