Solved PowerBook G3 (Pismo) battery problem!
I have an old G3 PowerBook (Pismo) that I am fixing up. Neither of the Li-Ion batteries would charge.
After hours of frustration, resetting PRAM, VRAM, various Voo-doo chants, I checked the System Profile. Under Power, I saw that the attached charger (a Mac Yo-Yo style charger) was only providing 26 watts of power.
I have an old PowerBook 1400cs lying around. It has a supply that uses the same connector and provides the same 24 volts and 45 watts that are required by these G3 PowerBooks. Now the battery charges. I also have a second and very old battery, and now it too is fully charged.
Here is the catch: When I first attached the 1400's power supply, nothing happened. I wanted to reformat the drive into one partition, so I made the laptop into a Target drive and made a disk image onto one of the drives of my MacPro. After, I reformatted the drive, copied the image back to the laptop, and then rebooted with a Mac OS 10.4 install disk. I restored the data to the drive, and while this was happening I saw that the battery was recharging!
For some reason, while using the install disk, the system finally saw the battery and that it can be recharged.
After rebooting into the restored drive, it still saw the battery. Nice change.
As I type, the G3 has the very dead battery that hasn't been charged in three years at 56% after being charged for under 90 minutes.
I had thought it was the Power Management Board (read so much that this is the problem) and ordered a replacement. Turns out that I didn't need to do that. It should be arriving next Wednesday. Oh well...
I hope this is of hope to anyone trying to revive their laptop.
BTW, I have seen several replacement power supplies out there. Many provide a maximum drain of 1.2 A. Make certain that it provides at least 1.8 A otherwise it won't let the battery charge (I ordered a new power supply, and it just didn't have the juice to do the job).
After hours of frustration, resetting PRAM, VRAM, various Voo-doo chants, I checked the System Profile. Under Power, I saw that the attached charger (a Mac Yo-Yo style charger) was only providing 26 watts of power.
I have an old PowerBook 1400cs lying around. It has a supply that uses the same connector and provides the same 24 volts and 45 watts that are required by these G3 PowerBooks. Now the battery charges. I also have a second and very old battery, and now it too is fully charged.
Here is the catch: When I first attached the 1400's power supply, nothing happened. I wanted to reformat the drive into one partition, so I made the laptop into a Target drive and made a disk image onto one of the drives of my MacPro. After, I reformatted the drive, copied the image back to the laptop, and then rebooted with a Mac OS 10.4 install disk. I restored the data to the drive, and while this was happening I saw that the battery was recharging!
For some reason, while using the install disk, the system finally saw the battery and that it can be recharged.
After rebooting into the restored drive, it still saw the battery. Nice change.
As I type, the G3 has the very dead battery that hasn't been charged in three years at 56% after being charged for under 90 minutes.
I had thought it was the Power Management Board (read so much that this is the problem) and ordered a replacement. Turns out that I didn't need to do that. It should be arriving next Wednesday. Oh well...
I hope this is of hope to anyone trying to revive their laptop.
BTW, I have seen several replacement power supplies out there. Many provide a maximum drain of 1.2 A. Make certain that it provides at least 1.8 A otherwise it won't let the battery charge (I ordered a new power supply, and it just didn't have the juice to do the job).
MacPro Workstation, 7 gig, 2.24 TB, 30",, Mac OS X (10.6.3), MacBook Pro, Intel iMac, iBook 600, Pismo G3