PowerBook battery calibration - reserve battery power - Dr. Battery

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Level 1

26 points

PowerBook battery calibration - reserve battery power - Dr. Battery

Hello,

I have a new replacement battery from Dr. Battery for my 12" PowerBook G4.

I decided to calibrate the battery as described by Apple. That is, from a full charge, keep working on battery power and keep doing so when it gets to near zero when you see the 'plug in to power or computer will go to sleep' message. The reserve battery power will kick in and the computer will sleep after a few minutes; you'll see the twinkling light on the latch come on. Shortly after that, charge the battery to full.

This is how my original Apple batteries used to work, always. But the Dr. Battery battery simply crashed or shut down my PowerBook soon after the 'plug in to power or computer will go to sleep' -- the laptop couldn't/didn't go to sleep. What's more, when I restarted it, the date had reset to 1-1-1971. Does this mean that a Dr. Battery battery cannot store reserve battery power? Is there some way to fix it?

The strange thing is that the first time I calibrated in this way with this new battery in the first week of January, it *did* work like it should.

Thanks for any info.

Posted on Feb 15, 2013 5:19 AM

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Answer 1

dalstott

Level 4

2,639 points

Feb 15, 2013 9:10 AM in response to KDS-KDS

The reason the time and other Prameter RAM settings were altered is because the G4 "12" Powerbook does not have a separate PRAM battery to maintain these values. Instead it uses a small capacitor which will maintain the PRAM settings only for a short time such as when changing a battery. The battery evidently spent it's charge when your PowerBook shut down.

I use a neat utility named coconutBattery to monitor battery status.

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/

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