Date reverts to Jan 1 1970 on new PB15

[gfroyle]

I have just bought a new PB15 1.25 and am having problems with the date reverting to Jan 1 1970. This seems to occur sporadically and is always associated with leaving the computer in sleep mode, but then being unable to "wake" it up just by opening it. I then have to use the power button and sure enough the date has reverted.

I have searched on google etc, but have not seen any other similar complaints... any ideas?

[I have 768M of RAM having replaced one 256Mb chip with a 512Mb chip]

Thanks

[theipodgod16]

its nothing to do with your model or ram. my brothers 500mz ibook does the same thing occasionally. we're still trying to find out why too.

[joeyjojoe]

if this happened on a pc, i would say the cmos battery is dead. i think there should be something similar to that on a mac ... so i'm thinking that the battery needs replacing.

i could be spouting absolute crap though, so wait for someone else to respond.

[gopher]

Reset the Power Management Unit.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

If that doesn't work, call AppleCare.

[RBMaraman]

gfroyle,

When you open your PB up, does a message come up in 5 languages telling you to restart using your power button? Or is the system just locked up and you know to restart using the power button?

If your answer to the first question is yes, then you are experiencing a kernal panic which is most likely caused by the RAM you installed. Take out the RAM you installed and see if the problem still occurs. If it doesn't, then you have some bad RAM.

[Powerbook G5]

Did you check the Date and Time preference? I have mine set to the network time so it is always synced with the server. Is that checked or anything set wrong in there?

[Westside guy]

Since I have nothing useful to add to all this good advice, I thought I'd chime in on the off-chance that you wondered "Why Jan. 1, 1970"? The reason is that in the C programming language, they arbitrarilly chose this as time=0 - time is tracked natively in seconds in C. Since basically all Unix-like operating systems are coded in either C or a variant (C++, objective C), they all use this same reference.

You might occasionally hear Unix geeks refer to "seconds since the epoch", which is just another way of saying "time since midnight 1/1/1970".

[Powerbook G5]

Damn, I thought it was some sort of epic cosmic event that took place on Jan 1, 1970.

[Thom_Edwards]

there is a battery in macs that keeps the time, etc., just like pcs. it may be dead

[Powerbook G5]

But on a new 15" PowerBook? My PowerBook from 1999 still keeps the date perfectly.

[Duff-Man]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
But on a new 15" PowerBook? My PowerBook from 1999 still keeps the date perfectly. Duff-man says....just like anything else, you can get stuck with a "bum" battery......not a frequent occurance, but still happens sometimes....oh yeah!

[raytube]

Hi,
It may be the battery but I remember having the same problem myself, but this was under OS X 10.2.

You say your PowerBook is new but does it have Panther on it? If not then this is perhaps the same issue encountered by people with an update for 10.2.4, I found this article:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20030312020856258

It has the clock resetting issue in it and also mentions machines not waking from sleep. This may be of use to you.

If you do have 10.2 then I think it is all resolved by upgrading to 10.2.8, the most recent update level for Jaguar. I would have thought you would have been entitled to Panther update anyway if you don't have it.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Rick