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Dan Erlandson

Q: Battery then Printer Funkiness with Lombard

I have an annoying although relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things. I have a Lombard where I had to replace the hard drive, so I went with a Toshiba 75 GB drive and installed 10.4.10 on it through a firewire enclosure and my G4 iBook. All went well and the Lombard runs quite well. The battery have in it is supposedly a "new" one off of ebay that does indeed give me a full charge, although never actually completes the calculation for how much time remaining on the battery. The battery occasionally gets low enough, around 25% where the battery then proceeds to drop to zero. No big deal, except that when this happens the installed printer vanishes from the print and fax preferences and I cannot readd it until I go to the Printer Setup Utility and reset the printing system. So I've suggested to my wife to just keep an eye on the battery charge and don't let it drop too low, but it does escape her notice at times. I know I could try another battery, but... just wondering if there is some software thing I might not have tried... I've jumped through all the hoops of resetting the power management unit, clearing preferences, reinstallling the driver... The Brother 2040 laser printer works wonderfully with everything else Mac ad PC. Any insights??

Thanks,

dan

Lombard, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jan 30, 2008 3:45 PM

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Q: Battery then Printer Funkiness with Lombard

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  • by jpl,

    jpl jpl Jan 30, 2008 7:59 PM in response to Dan Erlandson
    Level 7 (28,285 points)
    Jan 30, 2008 7:59 PM in response to Dan Erlandson
    Dan,

    I believe both the Lombard and Pismo running Tiger will never give you the time remaining; it is always "Calculating...", but the percent remaining is accurate. Generally, a battery behaving in this manner is not healthy.

    If you still have a bootable OS8.6 > 9.2.2 installed on the HD, you could try running Battery Reset 2.0 even though this utility is used for different symptoms:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60655

    Conditioning batteries:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284

    I am guessing what is happening in your case is the 'book is running on battery, the battery hits around 25% and the 'book shuts off due to a lack of power. However, it is not a proper shutdown so this is why you are losing your settings. A healthy battery will give you a low battery warning (You are running on reserve power), then put the 'book to sleep if you do not heed the warning.

    If the Reset 2.0 makes no difference nor trying Apple's conditioning procedure, I would buy a new battery. Here is one good source:
    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/batteries/