Help - PowerBook G3 Lombard replacement battery issues

[coius]

I just got my powerbook G3 Lombard battery in the mail. And I have run into an issue. a *BIG* issue.

before I begin, I bought a brand new Powerbook 99 series 6600Mah battery. The battery looks exactly like an apple battery, the lights on the side work, and when i press them, I get 3 out of the 4 lights light up.

Putting in the laptop, it doesn't show up. It's outputting power, i can power the laptop for a few minutes, but then the laptop shuts off. the lights will still light at 3 lights.

Battery Reset 2.0 sees the battery, despite the power manager not, and I can try and reset it. Try is the word, because I don't think it's actually ressetting it. The lights still say at 3 LEDs and don't reset to a blinking LED.

Is this an issue with calibration, or is the power manager in the battery dead? Is there anything i can do to force-reset the power manager in the battery? I can send the battery back, but I would like to see what i can do to force the system to recognize the battery is there.

One option I tried to was to do an old trick I saw on iBook G3 clamshell batteries. It's dangerous but I have seen it crash the power manager on the battery and force it to reset.

What you do is take a wire with the ends exposed and short out the + and - tabs on the battery. And internal system would crash/short the power manager and make it reset. No dice, didn't even do it.

I know the battery works since I can power the system for a few minutes, but I have no idea what the charge is on it. I will let it sit in the system for a few hours and let it charge, but is there no hope for the battery and I have to send it back, or is there something i can do to give the battery a kick in the butt and get it to behave right?

 

[Unknown_K]

Send it back.

If it doesn't show up there is something wrong with the controller in the battery (assuming your old battery did show up and charged). There is a circuit that controls the battery and will shut it down if it overheats or the controller senses the batteries have a short. Either way I would not bother troubleshooting something that is brand new with a warrenty and shows up DOA, nor would I start monkying around with shorting it out which will show up when you send it back for warrenty replacement.

 

[coius]

Yeah, I guess I will be sending it back. The battery still holds a charge, and it's getting more time now when I pull the plug, but if that circuitry is shot, there's nothing I can do.

I will talk to the guy and tell him I want to return it for an exchange. It was from a company in the USA, and the battery was relatively cheap ($35.99 shipped) so shipping it back may be no more than $4 from USPS.

 

[Unknown_K]

If you read the instructions from aftermarket cheap battery makers they suggest it might take a few cycles to get the full life out of the battery, but that has nothing to do with it not showing up and shutting down so quickly (and the 3 out of 4 lights being on constantly). To me this is a controller board issue and should be sent back ASAP.

 

[wally]

Inspect the contacts. If any are imperfect send it back. If they look ok in shape, take two clean business cards and use their combined thickness to gently burnish the contact surfaces. Try again in your Lombard, in both slots. If it still does not work, like Unknown_K said, send it back ASAP, don't do anything to void the warranty, have them send another.

 

[coius]

The battery is in good physical conditions, and yes I did clean the contacts on them. There's nothing wrong physically with the battery, but it does put out power, but the power dies very shortly. As far as I can tell, I think the power manager in it is dead or partially working. Might have been a power surge when putting the battery together that caused it. However, like I said, it's brand new, not NOS, and I am sure their testing went about as far as pushing the button on the end of the battery and seeing if it lights.

I already informed the seller, but since it's probably after business hours, I will have to wait till tomorrow to get a reply from the business.

btw, in apple batteries, someone found out that if you run the battery down (which is what I tried with this) and short out the battery, it causes all power to be pulled from the intelligent circuits inside because the battery loops back to the cells. starving the power manager would cause it to reset, and set to zero. Once you put it in the laptop, it would then reboot the power manager. Not all batteries are set up, but I did it to a battery on a pismo I once had, and a battery that gave 30 seconds jumped to 4 hours when I did it and worked between 3-4 hours after I tried it and worked all the way like that up to the day I sold the laptop.

I am not sure if this works like it, but I wasn't getting sparks, and I know it's depleted mostly out of power because when I tried it (you don't bridge it more than quickly touch it) it would then not start the laptop from power off. So something is reset, but the second I put it on, the lights come on for a second (like it did when I first got the laptop) and then turn off and go back to it charging and then getting 3-4 minutes.

There's some defect, and bridging those didn't do anything. but it is a known trick. you just gotta get the power down to where the cells have little to no power left (btw, of all places I seem to recall seeing it on macforums where the guy did it on both a pismo and an iBook G3 clamshell battery)

Either way, it's going back. and it's doing it in the same condition that I got it in, I didn't damage anything.

 

[stretch]

I have a G3 Lombard with similar issues. This thing refuses to see the battery, let alone charge it. I bought a new battery and external charger. The new battery took a charge, the old one flashed the charger light at me. This confirmed the old battery was toast. I also replaced the DC board and the charger board. The battery still refuses to show up. The battery has four lights on a full charge. I tried it in a friends Pismo and his Pismo saw the battery as expected. So the battery is ok and the problem is with my machine.

I read somewhere that one other possibility might be the mother board itself. If that's the case, I'll live with it tied to the wall since it also quit powering up my wireless card. I'm not going to replace the motherboard in a machine this old. It works great otherwise.

 

[wally]

Hmmm, upon further searching...

http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6873

Also, Google search reset lombard power manager

and also reset pismo power manager.

There is much Internet discussion on batteries not being recognized, and in some cases resorting to pressing the reset button on the back, and even unplugging the PRAM battery temporarily.

 

[coius]

I got an RMA. Anyways, it sees the other battery, and can even see this, but only through battery reset. So it knows something is there. My father told me that some batteries use a serial technology called "I2C" to talk with the machine and vice-versa. Being an electrical engineer, he says it's very easy for these to die during the construction of the battery due to heat and soldering and the like, that it will stop reporting data to the machines. They saw this in some of the old Honeywell XBS controllers when they installed intelligent batteries. They used a third-party company to make the batteries, and 4 out of 5 of them shipped dead due to the I2C controller being damaged during the process of wiring them up. So it's possible the cells are fine, just the I2C serial communications controller being stuff.

Either way, I have seen this happen in another battery and it turned out when it was rebuilt, the cells were practically new, it was the intelligent controller that was dead. When battery patrol swapped it out on the dell battery, it only cost $15 for the controller and $20 to work on the battery. The battery itself at battery patrol (rather new laptop) cost close to $160 and Dell wanted $180 for a new battery, so it was a rather cheap fix (I don't rebuild batteries due to how hard they are and I don't have the tools, nor do I desire to do it).

I assume apple's issue with the whole battery reset was a controller chip that corrupted too easily, possibly due to early designs with the new controller they switched to in the 99/00 series and iBook batteries. And I believe. That was about the time Intel based machines were switching the ACPI from APM and required the use of different battery management techniques.

I already did a power manager reset, even pulling the batteries. Those were among the first things I did. I also did the battery reset. Since the logicboard saw the old battery both times with no issues, I am assuming it's working. I think the new battery controller board is just stuffed. Either way, it appears the company is going to swap it. I will send the new battery off today for a replacement.