hi everyone, could do with some help regarding a battery issue im having with my powerbook (G4 15" FW800) issue Battery wont charge Displays charge status - 0% Displays charging status - Calculating tried Resetting NVRAM/PRAM/PMU Booting into open firm and resetting nvram and all tried finding someway of flashing the battery firmware but i cant find anything ideas Well the computer initially wouldnt boot even with the power adaptor plugged in. Resetting the PMU sorted this but needed to be done everytime the computer was shutdown. Soft reboots work fine, I've tried with another battery and it works fine, so clearly its a specific battery issue. The powerbook understands when there is and isnt a battery (menubar symbol), it reads all the info off the battery (sys profiler) .. it just wont charge it! any help much appreciated
Sounds like the battery is toast. I have the same computer. I'm lucky to get 20-30 min. There are a couple programs out there that will profile your battery and tell remaining charge and capacity. Do a versiontracker search for battery.
yeah unfortunately the battery im currently using only gives me about 20mins, its the original powerbook battery - the newer one is the not working one i had a look before, but i just realised i should compare the specs across the 2 batteries i own. Working (Old) Battery Information: Charge Information: Charge remaining (mAh): 972 Charging: No Full charge capacity (mAh): 974 Health Information: Cycle count: 185 Battery Installed: Yes Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 12384 Broken (New) Battery Information: Charge Information: Charge remaining (mAh): 0 Charging: No Full charge capacity (mAh): 1806 Health Information: Cycle count: 210 Battery Installed: Yes Amperage (mA): 0 Voltage (mV): 9434 note the working battery is a good 2 years older than the broken battery, i dont understand why a newer battery with a still higher capacity doesnt work. is it something to do with the voltage? im kind of curious as to why thats dropped so far ... thanks for any help on this guys, this has got me confused, do batteries just drop out and die? i was under the impression they progressively lost capacity untill they were essentially useless ...