When my Performa was new the battery lasted for years. Now I'm replacing my 3rd battery in less than 2 years. I don't use my Performa that much anymore so I don't know what the problem can be. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Kathy
Backup battery life is seriously diminished if a Mac does not remain attached to a switched-on wall (or power-strip) mains power socket between uses. The Mac itself does not have to be switched on during this 'rest' time.
Kathy
Now that the probable has been (more or less) eliminated, let us start on the less probable. You haven't mentioned which of the 70-odd Performa models that you have, the answer to which may help. For starters, are we talking 3.6V half-AA (cylindrical) lithium, or 4.5V (rectangular) alkaline batteries?
The following are asked to be able to eliminate them as causes, improbable or not. What is your criterion for saying that the batteries have become 'worn out'? Failure to maintain time or colour settings? Failure to start up? Did you, or someone else, replace the batteries? Were the replacement batteries of the last few years brand new, or 'borrowed' (and 'pre-loved') from another Mac? Were their terminal voltages measured? (For example, 3.3V
in circuit is the break point for lithium.) Was the marked polarity of the battery cradle (lithium) or leads (alkaline) carefully observed during replacement? Is your Mac one of the Performa 63x series, which have been known to have a different problem that seriously shortens battery life?
It's a Performa 200 and yes it is a 3.6v 1/2 AA battery and each time I replaced them it was with a new battery. The failure is in starting up. It shows an icon that it can't find the software. I haven't measured the terminal voltage. Do you mean with the new of old battery?
Kathy
A Classic II/Performa 200, eh? Now lift-off is imminent. When the Classic AIOs cannot find a startup device there are definite suspicionable causes.
1) There is no startup device because the internal hard drive is absent, or has failed, either mechanically or logically. Do you hear (or feel) the hard drive spin up?
2) If the hard drive spins up, it may be that there is no pointer in PRAM to its whereabouts. The battery may indeed be dead, or PRAM may have been scrambled. This is the trigger for a good old 'PRAM-zap': hold down the keys command-option-p-r
immediately after switch-on, and continue to hold them down for three further chimes. This needs the presence of a known good battery (showing 3.63 to 3.67V out of circuit, or not less than 3.3V in circuit) to be an effective 'cure', but it may enable a startup for troubleshooting purposes.
3) If this is ineffective, a Disk Tools floppy disk is needed as a startup device. The Mac looks first in the floppy drive when it polls the drives for startup devices, so PRAM setting is not then a factor. That is, the process is not dependent on the presence of a good battery. Insert the floppy disk simultaneously with switch-on.
4) The hard drive's logical formatting or driver may be corrupted. You will need the Disk Tools floppy to rectify this, using Disk First Aid and also, perhaps, Drive Setup. Both are on a Disk Tools diskette.
5) The boot blocks pointing to the 'blest' (ie, valid) System Folder may be corrupt, or the System Folder may not be blest, or there may be no System Folder present. Again you will need the Disk Tools floppy to rectify the fault. In the absence of a DT diskette, an external SCSI hard drive with its own blest System Folder, Disk First Aid and Drive Setup can replace it.
Given a good battery, your recovery may need repair of the hard drive's logical structures and driver, and re-installation of the System software. Do you have this? Which System?
I'm using Claris 4.0 on the computer. I guess if all else fails I can replace the hard drive. I have a spare that I picked up a few years back just in case something like this happens.
Kathy
ClarisWorks 4 is not an operating system but an application, which must have a System in the background to do the housekeeping. For example, ClarisWorks 2 needs a Mac Plus at least (a 68000 processor), System 6.0.5 at least (which the Classic II, with a 68030 processor, cannot use) or System 7 (which the Classic II can use). If you have the original
Mac, not Claris, diskettes, the System version will be stated on them. If you have no System diskettes, you will need them. The Classic II supports Systems 7.0.1 to 7.6.1.
