Lombard Battery Charging

[jkoci]

Just got a new battery for my Lombard. When I push the button on the battery it shows three lights so I assume it is charged. However it will not boot the Lombard. When I plug it in the machine boots but the battery icon only shows and X. The battery is not being seen by the computer. Thye pram battery is dead in it. Could that be the problem? I already reset the PMU button. The machine runs Panther.

 

[paws]

Mine does the same. I'm assuming that the circuit board that manages the battery isn't managing and was looking to replace it at some point.

 

[coius]

there is a way to reset the battery power manager. Take a wire and short both the + and - terminals. It will short out the power manager and reset it. The battery won't explode, so don't worry about it.

I had to do this on an iBook G4 battery and it reset the battery. Anyways, see if that fixes your problem. Sometimes the batteries will get confused.

 

[jkoci]

Never heard of that. I booted it with an OS9.2 CD to check if it was a problem with just OSX and the same thing happens. OS9 does not see the battery. I'm thinking it is the PMU board.

 

[jkoci]

A couple of other things I noticed were that when I have it unplugged and put the battery in it the computer starts and then shuts off quickly. Also if I unplug it and leave the battery in the date and time settings are kept. Any thoughts?

 

[wally]

Recently I re-celled a pack for my Pismo, and noticed initially that the machine would not startup at all, not even momentarily, from the fully charged pack. I had previously tried some firmware resets to the pack prior to re-celling as discussed in

http://www.maclife.com/forums/topic/51129/1

and

http://www.macintouch.com/laptopbatt.html

but this somehow caused me to have to reinstall 10.3.9 a bit sooner than I had planned. Anyway,...

Like your experience, when the machine was running from AC and the pack was inserted, the pack was not recognized. I then removed and reinserted the pack several times in succession; I am not sure but I think I got the symbol to change from the battery with an X inside to a battery with a plug symbol inside. But never the battery outline with the squiggle inside that indicates charging and certainly never any non zero capacity available indication. When next as an experiment I pulled the AC plug the machine continued to run on the non recognized but somehow existent battery! I let it run until it slept, plugged in the AC adaptor and recharged it which seemed to reset the gas gauge and started proper recognition. After a few such cycles I am getting 2 hrs 25 minutes of surfing with the airport card enabled from a $2 investment in scrap batteries.

The suggestion to short out the + and - leaves me a bit in shock, although I note with the pack out of the machine there appears to be some kind of protective disconnect going on, no volts on the outer terminals, at least with my particular version of the smart circuits (there are at least two variants of the pack internal power manager electronics).

Edited post: Previous link to laptop lithium fire removed, it has been corrupted with an ad server overlay at least for now. Anyway, although many internet lithium fire pictures are thought to be hoaxes, I have found technical reports explaining and verifying that above approximately 130 deg C spot internal temperature the cell chemistry goes exothermic, and nothing can stop it from there. This is good reason to respect the lithium ion cell spec sheet limits on current and voltage, not just in normal use, but also in momentary bench experiments.

 

[tomlee59]

It's great to hear that you got it to work that way, Wally. Very interesting!

I'll have to give your method a try (and maybe the "short + and -" method, too) the next time I have a need.

 

[wally]

Well, should you want to try the shorting trick be sure to check for very low energy on those terminals first, we do not know that all packs will be in a safe cooperative state! Maybe a pulldown resistor might be better than a wire to start. Although I am pleased to have rescued one battery pack, and will use it when I need to go portable, I don't completely trust it and have discharged it down to 50% state of charge, and am storing it in my fireplace! [] ]'>

 

[Bunsen]

there is a way to reset the battery power manager. Take a wire and short both the + and - terminals. It will short out the power manager and reset it.

Now, I haven't tried this myself, so I'm only passing on what I've heard. But what I've heard is that it's best to do this through a resistor, so the battery discharges slowly and doesn't heat up (nor does your wire). A nice fat 10W power resistor should do, or a 12V light bulb. Even a mains power light bulb would work, preferably a nice bright (100W?) one.

 

[coius]

there is a way to reset the battery power manager. Take a wire and short both the + and - terminals. It will short out the power manager and reset it.

Now, I haven't tried this myself, so I'm only passing on what I've heard. But what I've heard is that it's best to do this through a resistor, so the battery discharges slowly and doesn't heat up (nor does your wire). A nice fat 10W power resistor should do, or a 12V light bulb. Even a mains power light bulb would work, preferably a nice bright (100W?) one.

The goal isn't to drain the battery. it shorts it out within like a quarter of a second. it will stop the flow to the contacts. you just want to crash the power manager in the battery. It's not going to start a fire or make the wire flame out. I did this several times with many batteries that have power managers, and it seems to reset the battery's power manager and gives it a cold-reboot

 

[Bunsen]

Hm. I'll have to give that a try then. But I hope you'll forgive me if I try wally's method and the open firmware one first

Did you do this on lithium batteries, or the "Intelligent" NiCads out of the 5x0 'books?

 

[Bunsen]

Just as an opposing data point:

Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:49:58 -0600From: Swift

Subject: Powerbook G4 Battery Resuscitation

I too had a battery that my Titanium Powerbook G4 failed to acknowledge even tho the level lights showed a fully charged battery. Resetting the PMU did nothing- went to the Genius bar and they swapped it into their Powerbook but it still failed to be recognized. / I decided instead to fully discharge the battery to reset its internal power management chip but since no Powerbook would recognize it, I removed it and carefully wired in a 12 volt car tail light bulb. Ran it overnight- then placed into my powerbook and it has worked flawlessly for the past 2 months. (I also found that you cannot hook it to a "power hungry" 12 volt appliance because the internal power manager will not let it be drained too quickly.)

That's from the macintouch page linked previously.

So from this I take it that the object is to drain the battery completely to nothing, whereupon the internal IC has brain failure and forgets everything.

I'm not trying to start an argument or disagreeing: I'm researching what to do about my own battery and I'm interested in your comments.

Note: a short circuit through a wire would for def count as a "power hungry" load.

 

[jkoci]

and it seems to reset the battery's power manager and gives it a cold-reboot

I decided to wipe to drive and install OS9 so I could run the battery reset program. I did that and the machine still would not recognize that battery. I reinstalled OSX and that as well did not help. The machine says that there is nothing in the bays. I even have an old dead battery. It as well is not recognized.

 

[wally]

Try the battery in the right hand expansion bay with the machine first running on AC also, and again ignore the status icon and just pull AC power to see if the Lombard switches over to battery power. It is probably best to have charged up the PRAM battery for 48 hours before the switchover test.

The two sets of battery contacts inside the laptop are quite rugged but worth an inspection by flashlight to check for crap caught on those gold plated blade contacts. It is normal on both the Lombard and Pismo to have those little square rubber bumper travel stop blocks to be of different heights (higher on the left). If you are into exploratory surgery there is a 5A SMT fuse F1 to check on the Lombard near the left bay battery connector on the top side of the PC board.

 

[jkoci]

Try the battery in the right hand expansion bay with the machine first running on AC also, and again ignore the status icon and just pull AC power to see if the Lombard switches over to battery power.

Did that already. The machine runs briefly on battery and then shuts off.

 

[wally]

The batteries age by increasing their internal impedance (voltage drop under load) as well as by capacity (amp-hours) loss. They can show a fairly full gas gauge (reasonable no load voltage) but get drawn down under load quickly-this could explain your machine running only briefly. So after several years the battery distributor's inventory of lithium ions turns into junk if not recharged. The battery can be questionable in as little as one year's time in a hot warehouse. Now, it may be that your intelligent battery is out of sync somehow and in need of some kind of reset, but it's also possible your new battery is shelf stale. Maybe time to try a known good battery, and your new battery in another known good Lombard or Pismo. But before that, it would not hurt to leave it plugged in even if not properly recognized and see if it gets any gradual charging over several days time-perhaps the gas gauge is just lying and the battery nearly empty for all previous tests.

If indeed the battery voltage is slumping under load, you may be able to verify this by operating the machine open and carefully monitoring the exposed terminals with a voltmeter. A half charged battery should be around 11 volts under load, and hang in there for at least an hour. If the voltage slumps quickly towards 9V this is bad news and will trigger the laptop to sleep immediately. Depending on what you mean by runs briefly, you might be able to see the slump on the voltmeter before the sleep process disconnects the battery altogether. If it happens in less than a second you would need a storage scope to make sense of it.

Don't know if a malfunctioning PRAM bat can cause main battery issues; I have seen on the net folks saying it keeps their Pismos from booting if bad and installed, and when removed altogether then the machine will boot, but nothing I recall on main battery non-recognition/malfunctioning on either Lombards or Pismos in my surfing so far. So temporarily removing the PRAM battery and ignoring the pesky time/date message could be a useful experiment for you if you have not already tried disconnecting it.

 

[jkoci]

Should the machine show a menu bar symbol that it is plugged in? I seem to remember one on another machine that I ran OSX on. What are the symptoms of a bad power board?

 

[jkoci]

But before that, it would not hurt to leave it plugged in even if not properly recognized and see if it gets any gradual charging over several days time-perhaps the gas gauge is just lying and the battery nearly empty for all previous tests.

I left the machine plugged in with the battery in for a short time and now I have all four dots on the battery lighted instead of three. The battery seemed to charge up more. It still is not recognized and will not boot from the battery even with the pram battery disconnected.

 

[wally]

PM sent. Let it charge at least 4 hours. It still could have a capacity and internal drop problem, but a full charge will give it the best chance of running the machine. My understanding is that the gas gauge inside the battery is not to be trusted even a little until it has cycled thru a full discharge to sleep followed by a full recharge to 100%. But that it increased one or more LEDs seems to me to speak well about the laptop power board (but what do I know!). It's possible that recognition will not begin until the 100% point is reached also.

I'm running 10.3.9 on my Pismo with good PRAM battery and empty main battery compartment most of the time. You would think I should get a power adapter symbol with no battery outline but NO, I get a battery symbol outline with a bold X inside, this is true using both the YoYo style adapter and the PB1400 M4896 AC adapter. When I stick in a half charged M7318 battery the symbol changes to the battery with the plug adapter inside and (percent estimated charge) to the right. A few seconds later the battery changes to the battery outline with the squiggle ~ inside it indicating charging from AC adapter, the gas gauge number creeps up very, very slowly, 3 hrs plus to charge. When charging completes I think the symbol goes back to the battery outline with the plug adapter provided the battery remains inserted. When the battery is removed the outline with the bold X comes back almost immediately and the (percentage estimate) to the right goes away. There is an option to display the icon only, percentage gas gauge, or estimated time remaining-I have mine set to percentage.

It's possible something inside your laptop is bad causing sleep at the slightest voltage drop, but I think it is far more likely that you have misbehaving, possibly stale batteries, even the new one is suspect. It could be cell aging, or a malfunctioning smart monitor inside the battery that is shutting the battery down from inside. And as there are fewer and fewer G3 battery buyers, the quality of the warehouse stock of premanufactured G3 PowerBook batteries is going to be increasingly suspect due to aging.