problem with a powerbook battery

Clark Martin wrote on :

In article 3EE05288.6130B5BF@redacted.invalid, henri delebecque henri.delebecque@redacted.invalid wrote:

hello,

I have a powerbook G3 400MHz, not firewire (Bronze keyboard), that refuse to charge its battery:

Tatltetech teels me that:

the charger is on, the battery installed, the battery level is 12,6V (that's wrong, it is empty) the battery is not charging.

I have tried to zap the PRAM, and reset the power manager.

Is my battery dead ? If so, why does the powerbook syas that it is fully charged ?

Frequently when batteries die they will charge up to their nominal fully charged voltage but they don't actually hold much charge. So it will act normal except that it usually charges real fast and it discharges real fast to. The voltage starts off low and reaches the normal value, it's just the time element that is different. The discharge time can be extremely short, seconds.

It sounds like your battery is dead.

Jennifer Mullen replied on :

In 3EE5C8FF.696BED1@redacted.invalid henri delebecque henri.delebecque@redacted.invalid wrote:

I think that I have to be more precise: When I say that tattletech says that (the voltage is 12.6V and) the actual battery voltage is 0, I mean that the battery level dispayed by the mac is 0v.

This happend to my PowerBook (Lombard) a few weeks back. Booting into Open Firmware (command-option-O-F) and resetting nvram fixed it - as soon as I reset nvram, the lights on the battery came back on. The relevant OF commands:

reset-nvram reset-all bye

That last, depending on your model, could be "mac-boot" instead of "bye".

    J.