Recent content by gibbsjoh

Unit continues to power up intermittently and for a few seconds. I've done some poking around with the multimeter on the battery (7.5V) and on the board when connected to the PSU. There's 7.8V on the charging terminals for the battery. The top side terminals on the barrel connector show 7.8V to...

So I am not convinced it’s legit but it’s apparently a re-celled PB battery: https://www.power-supplier.co.uk/mobile-ie-laptop-battery/205/APPLE/Apple%20Powerbook%20150.htm Oddly it shows £31 on my laptop and €39 on my phone!

Yeah I'm hoping it'll come back to life somehow but not holding my breath. £30 for a new battery is worth a punt...

So this gets curiouser and curiouser! New PSU arrived today. The PB refuses to power up with any of the PSUs now. I left it unplugged with the battery out all day since I was out. I managed to get the PRAM battery removed very easily w/ some snips. No leakage, just some corrosion around the...

Yeah I’ll give it a try (gently!) later on.

No soldering iron 😱

No I was holding off as I thought it needed desoldering. I’ll do that this evening.

It doesn’t seem to like starting up without the battery - I will let it sit and charge for a bit and see how it goes later.

Now this is just getting WEIRD... it's sort of alive again: I got a peak reading from the aftermarket PSU of 1.8A - so below the 2A the stock PSU provides and way below the alleged 3A @ 7.5V the PSU is rated for. I checked the stock PSU and, surprise, 2.1A. On a whim I plugged it in and guess...

Thx for the info - oddly the 150 is now dead again after leaving it powered up overnight by accident. I've tried leaving it unplugged w/out battery, plugged in with battery, everything. Not so much as a peep. I'll see if my multimeter can measure current - or just get a new aftermarket PSU again.

So someone on Reddit recommended an aftermarket PSU - BOOM! Working! I suspect the drive seizing may have done some damage to the OG PSU (given it was trying to pull a ton of current). Also, for anyone interested, a standard IDE to CF adapter from Amazon with a 2GB card works great.

Yep I think I dodged a bullet so far.

No, just with the multimeter hooked up. The odd thing is, the PB worked great with no issues at all right up to when the HD siezed. Could that have damaged the PSU at all by the amount of current it was trying to draw to spin up? (It's been 25+ years since I studied anything related to...

Oops I got numbers jumbled. 7.8V.

OK so I'm parking the HDD issue at the moment since really it's not the critical thing here! Seems lots of folk have this issue w/ the 150 (the chimes but no boot thing). I took a multimeter to the PSU, battery and PRAM battery after the unit sat on charge overnight. PSU: 7.2 or whatever it's...