Powerbook 5300 LiIon

[System7]

Well, one of them has the uber rare Li Ion battery pack that is known for explosions.

Yay faulty rare batteries!! :

 

[Kyvinaria]

Nice! I thought Apple managed to nick all those Li-ion packs. Hang on to that for sure, eh?

 

[LCGuy]

Mmm, just don't use it

 

[benjgvps]

Possibly recell it for safety

 

[Mike Richardson]

The Li-Ion batteries from a 3400 or original G3 (often called the Kanga or 3500) will fit in a 5300 and even power it, but they cannot be recharged by the 5300 and probably won't be recognized correctly if at all.

Are you sure it not a 3400 or G3 battery?

I understand that less than 100 PowerBook 5300s shipped with LiIon batteries, and they were all recalled. Of course, recalls never attain 100% compliance, so a few batteries may have slipped through. You would have, for all practical purposes a one of a kind item if you really have a 5300 LiIon battery.

More info on the batteries: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21834?viewlocale=en_US

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Are you sure it not a 3400 or G3 battery?

I would like to second this. 3400 batteries look near-identical to 5300 batteries. Sadly, you cannot use a 3400 Li-Ion on a 5300. :-( (IIRC, you can't even use a 5300 Li-Ion battery on a 5300, because they updated the firmware to prevent the bad batteries from working, to avoid exploding.)

 

[iamdigitalman]

Actually, there were no ROM changes, but to make the LiIon batt work on the 5300, you should only use the original System 7.5.2 with PB 5300 enabler. After 7.5.2, apple removed support from the OS for the LiIon batt. Maybe someone who has that particular revision could figure out what they changed to make it incompatible, extract it, and turn it into a patch to be used on later versions of the SSW. A long shot, I know, but possible.

 

[alk]

It is possible to use 3400/Kanga Li-Ion batteries with a 5300; you just can't recharge them in a 5300 unless, as iamdigitalman mentioned, you are running System 7.5.2. I have personally run a 5300 from such a battery for several hours (amazing the run-time you can get), but as the 5300 can't recharge the battery, it proves to be rather impractical for everyday use.

Peace,

Drew