It's Alive! iBook battery back from the dead!

[Allan Hise]

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.

I'll let you know!

Woo hoo! I'm happy. A 2 cent piece of wire is better than  $130
for a new battery!

Allan