Found a good source for replacement Mac Portable batteries

[DragonKid]

I recently bought a nonworking Mac Portable as a restoration project, and the first thing I decided to do was replace the battery.  I know some people have had luck using off the shelf rectangular 6V lead-acid batteries and modifying the Portable's battery holder, but since the original cells are still made, I decided to do some looking around at the EnerSys catalog (EnerSys is the successor company to Hawker Energy, who in turn was the successor company to Gates Energy Products, the original pack's maker).

What I found is that EnerSys part number 0800-0102 is an exact replacement for the three 0809-0004 cells in the original pack.  This is 3 new EnerSys batteries just like the originals, already wired in parallel.  They're held together with hot-melt glue instead of shrink wrap, but the glue doesn't interfere with the plastic pack.  There's a plastic strip on the top held on with some hot-melt glue, but that's easy to pop off and then all you have to do is remove the gold terminals, foam tape, and plastic spacers from your original cells, solder or spot-weld them to the terminals on the new pack, bend over the tabs so the Portable's battery lid will fit, put the plastic spacers and foam tape back on, and reassemble.  This pack can be found in the US for around $40-50, just search the usual retail suspects for the part number.

As a side note, after replacing the pack, my Portable boots, but has no sound and the floppy drive eject doesn't work.  Probably time to change some caps and re-grease the FDD.

 

[unity]

Yeah, pretty sure everyone knows this. Every time a thread comes up they are mentioned. I was able to pick mine up at a local Batteries Plus. But I suppose it worth repeating. By the way, batteries plus will even spot weld the contacts on for free.

 

[DragonKid]

I didn't mean to make a useless thread, I've just heard a lot of people say that the original batteries are hard to get.  Admittedly, $50 is more expensive than $15 for a cheapo UPS battery, but it doesn't involve modifying the battery holder on the machine and these are probably better quality cells than your average $15 Chinese UPS battery.

 

[unity]

I think I paid about $30 at Batteries Plus. It was cheaper than Amazon at the time.

 

[haplain]

What do you mean modify the battery holder? I, and am sure others, can modify them in such a way they are much easier to replace moving forward. I'm about keeping things original unless they can be made better without compromising their originality. 

 

[DragonKid]

I've seen some sources online suggest bending the metal contacts in the holder.  Note that when I say holder, I mean the thing on the Portable that the pack slides into, not the plastic box that the cells are inside (which obviously has to be 'modified' by opening it to replace cells).

 

[uniserver]

actually those 6v 5ah, AGM batteries... that Batteries plus sell are great.  AGM is AGM. so...

i get them for 11 bucks.

alaska is working on a lithium pack/charger module for the portable... but even a NIMH pack would probably work fine too..

you can pick up NIMH AA, C cells at harbor freight for like super cheap. I would think NIMH

would be the next step for something better then the AGM L/A,   but obviously lithium packs would be

the cats meow for weight and capacity.  There is always lithium iron.... but then cost is a factor as well.

as of right now dimensionally, + Cost its really hard to beat the 6v 5ah 11 dollar battery pack from batteries plus for the portable.

 

[techknight]

I use the newer lithium iron phosphate batteries in our scoreboards for solar applications, those things blow lead acid away...