ioreg -w0 -l | grep IOBatteryInfo and Amperage

Here is a problem I have been having for a while and decided to dive into it tonight. My PowerBook doesn't run all that long on battery power, but the really annoying part is that the remaining life estimate is very inaccurate and it goes into its dying sleep without warning. I have reset PMU and NVRAM with no effect.

Using Terminal to access ioreg, and showing the same data in Capacity Meter, I get the following data after about an hour of use:

"IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=3823,"Amperage"=18446744073709550194,"Cycle Count"=157,"Current"=2140,"Voltage"=10556,"Flags"=4,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200} )

The Amperage number really bugs me since other discussions indicate that this should be in the low 1000s. My guess is that the data in the "smart" battery is corrupt. Said other discussions had three people with the same Amperage reading, but they all solved their problem by replacing the battery. I would hate to have to drop $130 on a new battery when the cells are probably fine but the data is corrupt. Is there any way to reset this data? Re-Calibrating is not the answer since I do that all the time when the computer cuts out without warning.