replacement 6500 battery

Can anybody recomend where I can get a new battery for a Powermac 6500?
David wrote on :

In article mtKdnVuJ3OaqignbnZ2dnUVZ_uKknZ2d@redacted.invalid, Cyberpunk1011 spamyourself@redacted.invalid wrote:

Can anybody recomend where I can get a new battery for a Powermac 6500? I went to the Apple Store and they just told me to goto www.megamacs.com, but I was unable to find the battery listed. Can somebody recomend a reliable website to go to?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/batteries/PRAM/

Perhaps OWC can help. Good Luck.

Geoffrey S. Mendelson replied on :

David wrote:

Perhaps OWC can help. Good Luck.

Apple used two types of batteries in that generation of Macs. The most common was a square 4.5 volt battery, similar to the IBM PC/AT one. It's a 9 volt battery cut in half and stuck in a nice plastic box with a wire on it. They are hard to find, but not impossible. If you are handy with a soldering iron, you can open up the box, and put in just about anything that fits. 3 A-76 1.5 volt batteries can be squeezed in if you can figure out how to connect them.

I put a drop of silver solder on them, let them cool and then heat the drop of solder enough to stick a wire in it. Use saftey glasses, don't try this at home, all the usual disclaimers. Once wired together, insulate each cell with tape and stuff it back in the box. Make sure you get the polarity correct.

The other kind is a round 1/3 AA 3.6 volt lithum cell with a "long nose". Although Apple does not recommend it, I have never had any trouble using 3 volt CR2 1/2 AA Lithum cells. They are a little wider and need to be pushed in. They don't have the long nose, so if you are sloppy, you can put them in backwards and damage things.

I mark the motherboard (for either type) with a black laundry pen indicating polarity. It helps prevent me from messing up.

Geoff.

Adrian replied on :

Geoffrey S. Mendelson gsm@redacted.invalid wrote:

David wrote:

Perhaps OWC can help. Good Luck.

Apple used two types of batteries in that generation of Macs. The most common was a square 4.5 volt battery, similar to the IBM PC/AT one. It's a 9 volt battery cut in half and stuck in a nice plastic box with a wire on it. They are hard to find, but not impossible. If you are handy with a soldering iron, you can open up the box, and put in just about anything that fits. 3 A-76 1.5 volt batteries can be squeezed in if you can figure out how to connect them.

I put a drop of silver solder on them, let them cool and then heat the drop of solder enough to stick a wire in it. Use saftey glasses, don't try this at home, all the usual disclaimers. Once wired together, insulate each cell with tape and stuff it back in the box. Make sure you get the polarity correct.

The other kind is a round 1/3 AA 3.6 volt lithum cell with a "long nose". Although Apple does not recommend it, I have never had any trouble using 3 volt CR2 1/2 AA Lithum cells. They are a little wider and need to be pushed in. They don't have the long nose, so if you are sloppy, you can put them in backwards and damage things.

I mark the motherboard (for either type) with a black laundry pen indicating polarity. It helps prevent me from messing up.

Good grief, Geoff! Talk about making life complicated when it's so easy just to get the correct battery in the first place.

Cyberpunk1011 replied on :

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

David wrote:

Perhaps OWC can help. Good Luck.

Apple used two types of batteries in that generation of Macs. The most common was a square 4.5 volt battery, similar to the IBM PC/AT one. It's a 9 volt battery cut in half and stuck in a nice plastic box with a wire on it. They are hard to find, but not impossible. If you are handy with a soldering iron, you can open up the box, and put in just about anything that fits. 3 A-76 1.5 volt batteries can be squeezed in if you can figure out how to connect them.

I'd much rather simply buy the correct battery in the first place, so long as it won't cost me $40-200 like some of the batteries listed at that website Apple told me about. I didn't see anything that seemd to match, but it's possible I overlooked, given that I'm unsure what type to search for. All I have to go on is what is written on the battery itself:

Looking at the battery, on the side, it says: 840 4.5 Volts Alkaline Rayovac Corp Madison WI 57311 Made in U.S.A.

On the front, it simply says Rayovac Computer Clock Battery

the other side has a standard warning about explosions found on almost all batteries.

P.S. the previous post seemed to be correct, according to the picture. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Ray%2DO%2DVac/MAC45V/

Cyberpunk1011 replied on :

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

David wrote:

Perhaps OWC can help. Good Luck.

Apple used two types of batteries in that generation of Macs. The most common was a square 4.5 volt battery, similar to the IBM PC/AT one. It's a 9 volt battery cut in half and stuck in a nice plastic box with a wire on it. They are hard to find, but not impossible. If you are handy with a soldering iron, you can open up the box, and put in just about anything that fits. 3 A-76 1.5 volt batteries can be squeezed in if you can figure out how to connect them.

I'd much rather simply buy the correct battery in the first place, so long as it won't cost me $40-200 like some of the batteries listed at that website Apple told me about. I didn't see anything that seemd to match, but it's possible I overlooked, given that I'm unsure what type to search for. All I have to go on is what is written on the battery itself:

Looking at the battery, on the side, it says: 840 4.5 Volts Alkaline Rayovac Corp Madison WI 57311 Made in U.S.A.

On the front, it simply says Rayovac Computer Clock Battery

the other side has a standard warning about explosions found on almost all batteries.

P.S. the previous post seemed to be correct, according to the picture. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Ray%2DO%2DVac/MAC45V/

Geoffrey S. Mendelson replied on :

Cyberpunk1011 wrote:

I'd much rather simply buy the correct battery in the first place, so long as it won't cost me $40-200 like some of the batteries listed at that website Apple told me about. I didn't see anything that seemd to match, but it's possible I overlooked, given that I'm unsure what type to search for. All I have to go on is what is written on the battery itself:

Looking at the battery, on the side, it says: 840 4.5 Volts

Sticking "Rayovac 840" into my favorite search engine (dogpile) showed my many hits for places selling them. The first one wanted $15.

For me it would be near impossible. I had one and never bothered to update the battery. Since I have a LAN, I just put an ethernet card into it and used a network time server. YMMV.

BTW, the RTL8139 chipset 10/100 ethernet cards sold for next to nothing these days work fine in them. If you get one new, look for the MacOS drivers as a binhexed SIT file on the floppy. If you don't have the floppy, you can download the drivers from RealTech's web site.

Another good card is Digital's (DEC) DE500. If you nose around HP's web site, you can find the OS 8 drivers and OS 9 works without drivers. DEC is long gone, but someone might have a card lying around.

BTW, if you add a OPTI chipset USB card, you can use USB keyboards, mice and hard drives. They can't be accesed at boot time, but once the computer boots, they work fine. You need to upgrade the drivers with a download from Apple for OS 8.5 and 8.6 but OS 9 has them built in.

Geoff.