PowerBook Charging Very Very Slowly

[bavbavis]

I have a PowerBook 15 inch (5,8) 1.67 A1138 that is charging the battery incredibly slowly. At first I thought the battery was totally dead, so I bought a new one, however that one didnt seem to charge either. Although leaving it on charge all night with the powerbook off it did go from 35% to 36% and coconut battery reports that the mAh has gone up from 1591 to 1614.
Looking at the Power info in System Profiler everything looks OK, the battery and charger are genuine and the 65w charger (A1021) will charge the battery in my 12" powerbook.


Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1614
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4533
Health Information:
Cycle count: 3
Condition: Good
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 3
Voltage (mV): 11221

Hardware Configuration:

Clamshell Closed: No
UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

AC Charger (Watts): 65
Connected: Yes
Charging: Yes

Has anyone had something similar and how did you resolve it? I have tried the usual PMU and PRAM reset.

Thanks

 

[bavbavis]

More info

I still haven't got a resolution for this. I have tried 3 batteries, 2 Genuine Apple ones which showed they were charging, but only increased by 1% every 24 hours and one 3rd party battery from Amazon UK which according to System Profiler wasnt charging at all, although xbattery showed that its voltage was increasing.

As a dirty fix I have ordered a Newertech external Powerbook battery charger so that I can at least charge the batteries outside of the Mac.

One other thing that I noticed today is that I plugged my old 1st Gen iPod Touch into the Powerbook to charge and although it did charge over USB, it was incredibly slow. Could this point to an AC adaptor problem or simply that the AC adaptor cant handle running the powerbook, charging the battery (slowly) and charging the iPod?

 

[ElectronGuru]

I was going to suggest the PMU reset, but all your testing points to a hardware issue. You've already replaced the battery and it sounds like the power supply is working on the other machine (?). So that leaves the internal power system. Check ifixit, but I seem to recall a component that could be replaced (with some trouble).

 

[bavbavis]

Thanks

Thanks ElectronGuru, I guess you are talking about replacing the DC-in board, which I had considered until I read another thread about a someone with a similar problem, they changed the DC-in board and it made no difference.

I would like to try another 65w charger to rule that out, but I dont know anyone with one to ask.

 

[bavbavis]

Running off batteries again...

The Newertech battery charger/conditioner arrived yesterday and works really well. So I am able to run the Powerbook off the battery again. It turns out that all the batteries that I have (the original battery, the new Apple battery and the cheap 3rd party battery from Amazon) are all good and hold a decent charge.

 

[SkyBell]

Well, at least now you have enough spare batteries to use that PowerBook all day long away from an outlet.

 

[bavbavis]

Thats exactly what I am getting SkyBell, a full days usage from the 3 batteries. And because its a PowerBook 1.67 DLSD I am able to hot swap the batteries without having to shutdown.

I am getting slightly odd behavior from the original Apple battery, which initially reports about 3900mAh as its "maximum charge" according to Coconut Battery, but this drops as its discharged and I can mean the PowerBook sleeps when it still thinks the battery has 8% charge. I am hoping that a few conditioning cycles with the Newertech charger improve this.