Battery Resurrection....

[Dronecatcher]

Recently I bought a G3 iBook from a car boot sale for £5 - I didn't honestly expect it to work but was hoping to salvage a hard drive and maybe a RAM stick. However getting it home I was amazed to find it booted ok and it turned out to be the 800Mhz model with max RAM and a CD/RW albeit with a completely dead battery.
From what I could gather the iBook had last been used in 2009 - so no surprise with the failed battery.
I decided to give Panther a whirl on it and after installing realised the battery wasn't seated correctly. After being placed correctly the battery was now showing a dismal faint red line in the battery indicator and one flashing green light on the battery. I reset the PRAM and tinkered away with Panther for about 4 hours - after which the battery still had only one green light.
I decided Panther wasn't for me and then did a fresh install of Tiger…imagine my surprise when the battery was suddenly showing 4 green lights and 100% in the indicator! After setting up Tiger with updates etc I tried the iBook on battery only and got just over 3 hours out of it!
I suppose the point I'm making is don't judge the condition of an old battery too quickly - give it time to see if the dormant chemistry can be kick started.

 

[CooperBox]

That certainly sounds like a great purchase for £5, especially with a serviceable battery, and a 800Mhz model.
I too would have dropped that sort of money on a white G3, although to be honest they have never really excited me like the earlier 466Mz G3 clamshell model - which are getting more & more difficult to find these days.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I too would have dropped that sort of money on a white G3, although to be honest they have never really excited me like the earlier 466Mz G3 clamshell model - which are getting more & more difficult to find these days.

I agree - I did manage to buy a Clamshell last year for £10 at a sale but the numbers are against you now.

 

[AmazingHenry]

I bought a replacement battery for my Clamshell that went dead after just a few months... maybe I should try installing Tiger on it.

That certainly sounds like a great purchase for £5, especially with a serviceable battery, and a 800Mhz model.
I too would have dropped that sort of money on a white G3, although to be honest they have never really excited me like the earlier 466Mz G3 clamshell model - which are getting more & more difficult to find these days.

LOL! How many Clamshells do you have?

 

[CooperBox]

I bought a replacement battery for my Clamshell that went dead after just a few months... maybe I should try installing Tiger on it.


LOL! How many Clamshells do you have?

Firewire 466MHz? Just the one.
I have my eye on another 466 which looks like it's near mint, and if the price is correct - it's mine!
After that I may thin out a few of the original blueberry & tangerine 300MHz clamshells (purchased as a job lot). Unfortunately most of these early models suffered from stress-relief cracking around the apple logo just below the screen, and often in and around the carrying handle. I've yet to find a mint example of the early 300MHz model - which doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[bobesch]

That certainly sounds like a great purchase for £5, especially with a serviceable battery, and a 800Mhz model.
I too would have dropped that sort of money on a white G3, although to be honest they have never really excited me like the earlier 466Mz G3 clamshell model - which are getting more & more difficult to find these days.

On the long run the g3-Snow seems to me close to extinction compared to the clamshell ...

 

[MacCubed]

Similar thing happened to me with my Lombard, battery wasn't recognized in OS X, I booted into OS 9 to see what it was like, and then the battery started working fine out of nowhere. While this is the case, I have had plenty of dead batteries in these older Macs, and out of all my PPCs only 2 out of the 5 original batteries still work.

 

[weckart]

I grabbed a PDQ for a pittance, which hadn't been fired up in over 13 years. It was pristine, the screen was vibrant with zero fading and the battery charged right up. Seems like it had only been used on AC power as there were few cycles on the battery. You can still be surprised.

More often, batteries on thes old PBs charge up to only give minutes if not seconds of power before dying.