"THE" battery problem, or something even worse???

You may be having a couple of problems. Two questions:

1) Did you try resetting thr PMU?
2) What is the capacity of your battery according to System Profiler?

Those numbers are not right.

The Full Charge (Maximum capacity) should be in the region of 4400 or more.
The remaining (actual) capacity number is the amount of charge the battery is currently holding.
the Amperage is the amount of current the machine is drawing from the battery. So you can see that you theoretically have 20 mins or so of charge - the negative number means it is drawing that much from the battery, if you plug in the ac adapter it should be a positive number as the battery charges.

The cycle count is the number of times the battery has been through a complete charge/discharge cycle.

You need to call Apple support and explain that those numbers are unacceptable in a new machine. I'd say it was the battery, but the other things you mention indicate some problem with the PMU.

Before calling Apple you should do a reset of the PMU. Shut down, Take the battery out, unplug the machine and then press start and hold it down for 5-6 seconds. (Apple will want you to do that anayway) - The other things you mention indicate some sort of Power management problem, but I can't be sure it's not just the duff battery.

Best of Luck.

Ok, here is the strange part. Mine was doing exactly what yours was, called Apple and am getting a new battery. The other interesting thing is that the battery seemed in a "coma," the cycle count would not change no matter how many times cycled. Then today while using it the battery drained down in 20-30 minutes, the system failed to shut down and the computer stayed on. The computer showed 0% charge, but when I pressed the battery charge check button it showed 3 lights out of 4. I rebooted the computer and my capacity is now back to 4540 and I have almost 2 hours left!

So I am guessing the controller on the battery crashes or gets very confused, stops responding and the computer only charges and discharges one cell. This is all pure guess mind you.

Ok, here is the strange part...

Well Edmund, it gets even stranger for me. My battery capacity has been dropping -- I use XRG (X Resource Graph - great freeware), and I went from the 4400's cur/max to the 800's in the month I've had my new DL/hi-res PBook, and of course, the battery drains quicker. I've calibrated and reset, the whole nine yards, and I called Applecare yesterday, and after less than five minutes of hold time (I don't know how THAT happened), I got to a rep and with a few questions, the new battery is on it's way.

Here's the strange, scary, and a little depressing part. Earlier tonight, I unplugged my AC adapter. The XRG read the usual cur/max capacity of 823/840. When I did so, I plugged the adapter back in and out, and somehow slightly jiggled the connection and voila, the capacity jumped to 4550/4658. I've had it running for 2:39 hours, and it shows an estimated 48%/1:24 remaining:
Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4658
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2158
Amperage (mA): -1283
Voltage (mV): 11153
Cycle Count: 16
I'm running airport, mail, firefox, calendar, isync, bluetooth, and my energy prefs are set with sleep options off (I wanted non-stop running to test the battery) -- and with all that, I may end up getting around four hours?!?! Which means, uh, it isn't the battery?

Geez... don't get me wrong, my PBook is awesome, I was just hoping for a simple solution (which it still might be, but I'm doubtful). One consolation is that of the battery-related postings I've read in these threads, most report they are getting a new battery and then you don't hear anything further. Stay tuned...
AZB

Hi azbigfella

Yes, I'm seeing something very similar. 3 week old Hi-res has worked fine so far with battery up in the 4500 area (though a bit more variation than I've seen in the past and once it dropped to 3500 or something, before going back up).

Not it's on 1.592, and that was after following the calibration instructions to the letter. I don't think it's the battery itself - I suspect it's the whole "smart" charging aspect that has got broken, which is partly why I wonder whether a new battery will give anything other than temporary alleviation. I'm sure I'll find it will go back up in a few days after one particular charge. But this way I cannot rely on it for 4 hours computing.

I'll be onto Apple though Monday for a new battery or at least some way of fixing this.

I find it slightly worrying that so far into this Powerbook design such problems are still happening. It doesn't bode well for such radical designs as will be necessary for the Intel architecture.

Ian

From what I saw it sounds like it is the battery circuitary, not the charging, that is confused. The battery seems to stop switching cells and uses only one cells worth of charge. And it seems sometimes it gets "unconfused."

Well, I will play with new battery and we'll see what happens.

Well, it seems we had the same exact thing happen! I am wondering if I should call in before returning old battery to report what happened for their own troubleshooting purposes. I won't keep the original battery, as I am sure it will do this again sometime soon.

Edmund,
The same thing?!? You're right, you need to call Apple -- I will as well. I hope we get some techs that understand the significance of this, as right now they are passing out new batteries like candy and it seems like there very well could be more to the story. Keep us posted -- I will,
AZB


Performa/G3 iMac/G4 eMac/G5 2.0dp/and my 15" G4 1.67 DL PBook w/2G RAM ROCKS!!! Mac OS X (10.4.3) My Macs are like my children, I love them all equally (even the ugly ones)...

Sorry, let me be clear: the same thing happened with ORIGINAL battery. I am currently using the replacement battery and will report when I have some hours on it. I have a feeling Apple is aware of a bad batch of batteries.

You're right -- Apple is aware of the bad batch of batteries. I talked with an Apple tech today and he was very excited about hearing there was some type of thing that happened when I jiggled the AC connector in it's socket. As I mentioned above, on a battery from the "bad" batch, the mAh went from 800-ish to 4600+ just by moving the connector in and out a little -- he immediately escalated the call to his supervisor, as there may be some issue with not only the bad batteries, but also/or the charging circuitry (at least in my PBook). From the two of them (the rep and the sv), I had the feeling there's been no discussion (in their camp) of problems beyond the now-accepted bad battery issue, so at least now they are aware of other possibilities, FWIW. But, like I said, it may just be my PBook.

It's been 24 hours since I this happened, and the battery ran for over four hours non-stop the first time it reset, and I've used it on and off today, with the charge dropping to 85% a couple of times, and it still shows a cur/max mAh as 4563/4570 on XRG.

For those of you (with October, 2005 hi-res PBooks) having battery problems, call Apple for a replacement battery. If you're thinking of also jiggling your ac connector in its socket on your PBook to possibly get the same result I did (described above), be advised that all it took for my unit to change or somehow reset the charge factors was a very SLIGHT, subtle pressure, and it could more accurately be decribed as a very gentle in-out manipulation that was only lasted a split second and it was hardly an exact motion. That's all -- it was an inadvertant result and I can't promise you will be able to repeat it (I don't know that I could repeat it). The important thing is that it happened, and tso I'm reporting it. For the record, I'm NOT advising you to start wiggling and yanking connections -- use your heads, kids 😉
AZB

Performa/G3 iMac/G4 eMac/G5 2.0dp/and my 15" G4 1.67 DL PBook w/2G RAM ROCKS!!! Mac OS X (10.4.3) My Macs are like my children, I love them all equally (even the ugly ones)...

Mine reset itself while running from the battery, with no power connected. It just went haywire and 'reset' to full charge. So I would guess its more a circuitry/logic problem. We'll see.

Then I guess the question is although it shows a full charge, does it really have one -- which is why I ran my battery in no sleep mode just to see how long it would last, and was very impressed with the 4+ hours. Go figure. AZB

In my case it actually did seem to have a full charge and lasted 3 hours under typical use (which is what I was getting before it started dropping in capacity). So the reported capacity (up or down) does match the amount of time I get from it.

I'm on my second dual layer SuperDrive 15-inch Powerbook, as my local Applestore swapped the whole thing instead of just the battery.

The first battery, for some reason unknown to me, started showing a 20 minute battery life. The latest one was showing 0 amps of power, and a 0mAh full charge capacity.

Pulling your quick "in/out" adapter toggle on the second battery yesterday brought it to a 65020 mAh full charge capacity... something less than 0, if you're dealing with unsigned registers. Now, THIS battery will run for
about 20 minutes.

I'm not so sure it's the batteries, or the batteries alone that have a problem. I think the culprits are in part the batteries, in part the firmware, and/or in part the "safe sleep" code. I'm betting (and I could be wrong) that the safe sleep restore routines are conflicting with communication between the computer and the battery when we're plugging in the adapter that's fritzing the on-board diagnostics of the battery.

My free advice (worth exactly what you pay for it) would be, despite Apple's conditioning guidelines, NOT to allow the battery level to drop to 0 so that the computer goes into safe sleep. Shut down your computer before that point and plug it in, until Apple has a fix.

It'd be nice if someone with Apple tech credentials could comment on this soon though, as I'm playing detective here without access to all the facts.


Various Mac OS X (10.4.3)