[P1] It's Alive! iBook battery back from the dead!

[Donald Hinkle]

This is almost Dr. Frankensteinian in its implications!
-don
On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 12:20 AM, Allan Hise wrote:

> I have a 2002 iBook 700 that hit it's 1 year mark in August. Shortly
> after, my battery stopped charging, and the 'no battery present' icon
> showed in the menu bar within 15 minutes or so after booing the iBook.
>
> I tried the tricks flying acorss the internet... reset PRAM, reset PMU,
> reset NVRAM. Nothing worked. Applecare wanted me to buy a new battery.
> Since this problem happened virtually overnight (so tapering off of
> battery life) I didn't think it could be 100% dead.
>
> I was surfing the apple discussion board today and ran across an
> interesting suggestion. Take a solid piece of wire and short the
> 2 outermost terminals of the battery to reset the battery's internal
> circuits.
>
> I had nothing to lose, since the battery appeared to be toast anyway.
> First I downloaded this nifty battery monitoring script:
> <http://www.mitt-eget.com/software/macosx/>
> When I ran it with the dead battery, it claimed the batery was giving 
> 0 V.
>
> When I shorted the two outside terminals on the battery (after 
> removing it
> far from the iBook and wearing saftey goggles) the lights on the 
> bottom of
> the battery began to flash in sequence. Cool! The lights had never 
> come on
> since the problem began. That's something new.
>
> I returned the battery to the iBook, and the amber light came on. Good
> sign, indeed. The battery script I mentioned above now gave me a good
> voltage ~12V, but 0 Ah. It slowly charged. It took about 2 hours before
> the green light came on and the menu bar said 100%. It claimed there is
> about 5 hour of life, which seems insanely high. I think it's time to
> calibrate the battery and see if it is back to it's old self.
> ...>
>
>
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