Macbook Pro project and possibly very bad battery

[Zotaccian]

I recently bought Macbook Pro from year 2006. No hard disk and charger inlcuded. I installed 500GB Samsung drive and bought cheap Chinese charger. The machine says the battery should be replaced.

The machine has shut down unexpectedly couple times and I suspect its the battery since now I have been running on this for some time (YouTube actually playing in background when I type this) without it at all. Has anyone here had battery causing this kind of behaviour? The battery is original Apple one and it does hold some charge but maybe it is faulty? The machine has shut off twice when powered only by the battery and once when charger was hooked and battery charging. Now the machine atleast seems to run fine with only charger.

I paid 60USD inlcuding shipping. It has 2GHz Core Duo and 2gigs of RAM, external condition great, haven't tested SuperDrive. Is it worth getting new battery and when you count the value of HDD and charger (I paid something like 32USD for HDD and 25USD for charger), what do you think? OS X support is gone long time ago.

 

[jimmyco2008]

I think you should buy a new (~2014) MacBook...

What you have now sounds like it might start a fire, especially with the "Chinese" charger.

 

[Zotaccian]

Well I'm not looking for new machines, I do have relatively powerful PC which I very rarely need.

It really seems that the battery is the issue since there are zero issues when running with only charger. Another option would be the battery connector/cable, I do have one unused somewhere. Third and worst option would be that there is somethinh wrong with motherboard.

I did bid for new battery. When everything is combined this might get very close what just buying fully working machine would cost...

 

[joe-h2o]

Does it only shut down when the charger is connected?

The charger may be tripping the safety systems of the charging system because it's feeding the macbook extremely poorly conditioned DC power, or even leaking high voltage AC.

This could also be damaging the battery.

I would not use a cheap chinese knockoff charger for this exact reason - there are a couple of ways to do mains voltage AC > 20 VDC conversion, and the Apple charger does it the safe and efficient way. The knockoff chargers do it the cheap and dirty way. The result is that you get dirty power that can interfere or damage your equipment. Worse, you can also potentially cause a situation where you can be electrocuted or be at risk of a fire.

If the battery is simply old, then it will fall under voltage quickly when under load and the computer will simply shut down because it knows that if it doesn't the battery will simply run out. What does system profiler say in regard to battery health?

 

[Zotaccian]

With only the charger (no battery at all) therr are no problems, when battery is installed shut downs begin. Battery has now drained quite a lot during testing and couple times the machine has started to boot but all of sudden screen has gone almost black before getting to OS and machine has shut down. Like the machine is doing everything it can but the battery simply not giving enough juice.

As stated in first message the machine tells to replace the battery. I read that this could also be motherboard problem but after testing I already ordered new battery, old one has something like 465 cycles. Getting original parts would be far to expensive to makeit reasonable, even now I'm wondering if this was wise purchase, even for a project. Mainly because OS support, which of course is bad with this 2008 Macbook with Intel Gfx as well....