Lombard/Pismo Batteries

[asaggynoodle]

If anyone has the part number of the EEPROM/Controller that is used you could probably find a datasheet to rewrite the register values. 

My thought is to dump the ROM of a known good battery pack, then one of another that has been completely drained/used up. You could use a simple Hex editor and just compare the dumps side by side. If you then translated the Hex values to decimals that show a difference you could probably get an idea of which bits to change in order to reset the wear leveling settings. Or simply burn the ROM of the known good one to the abd one and replace the cells.

 

[techknight]

That likely wont work because each battery is uniquely serialized, etc... plus a ton of other calibration data thats going to vary. 

thats why I said just clone it. 

 

[haemogoblin]

Mine lasts for about 45 minutes, but I know it is just a matter of time before it goes. Which is annoying, because I still enjoy using my Pismo for typing, I've yet to find something to best its ease of use.

 

[J English Smith]

Yes, they are pretty great. Love the keyboard feel. I like the iBooks too, but the Pismo just has an extra something and the screen size is just about perfect too. I wish some remanufactured batteries would become available at about a $40-50 price point. There were a lot more batteries on the 'Bay when I started collecting them in 2010 or so.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

The Wallstreet batteries are readily available, but the Pismo and TiBook units are getting harder to find.

 

[Unknown_K]

Why are the older Wallstreet batteries easier to get compared to the newer Lombard/Pismo and tiBook models?

I had one somewhat working battery for my Wallstreets (haven't charged it in a while) and a somewhat working  one for a TiBook. I use my later G4 laptops more as laptops and they have easier to find new batteries (of various quality).

 

[wally]

All of the 4 Pismo batteries I have examined use the Benchmarq, now TI, bq2040 Gas Gauge IC.  In addition there is a Seiko S-8233A Battery Protection IC and a series switch, an NEC uPA1712 MOSFET.  And I think possibly a chemical fuse that gets blown if the voltages or currents sensed get too extreme.

Often the older batteries die during discharge by the S-8233A undervolt detecting the weakest cell section before the whole pack voltage drops enough to trigger a valid gauge AH capacity downwards recalibration.  To the user this looks like the onscreen battery time indicates some normal amount of run time remaining and then suddenly things just go dark, no warning to the user about getting close to battery power down.  So if you can skillfully swap in a set of matched used lithiums in just the weakest section you might be surprised to get a significant step up in run time without tweaking the bq2040 internal bits (but not back to brand new, just back to whatever the last valid AH recalibration happened to be just before the battery started undervolting in one section).   I have done this several times successfully but is is a pain getting inside the pack non-destructively. 

The skill comes in the order of disconnection and reconnection of the battery string from the Seiko and bq2040.  The battery power at the very top of the string needs to be disconnected first to disable protection, and reconnected last, only after all the lesser battery string voltages being watched by the Seiko are wired in and stabilized.  Reminds me of watching those old movies about defusing bombs, no, no, don't cut the blue wire, cut the red wire...kaboom!

When rewiring the battery string connect the ground first, then the 3.7V section, then the next at 7.4, continuing upwards until the top of the string at about 12V which if I remember correctly is the short red wire...no wait, it's been some years, I think...kaboom!

Every time I have gotten the urge to play with the bq serial bus bits I have found yet another flea market Pismo pack that one way or another I have got up to about 1 hour run time by luck of the pick or by just by cell voltage, capacity and esr matching and then cell section swapping so I have never messed with the bq2040 reprogramming.  Some of you Arduino experts can have some fun with this one, just go read the data sheets.  I do not know if reprogramming capacity has been locked out in some way.  The pack can be bench tested by a 470K pull down to ground, between -enable pin 2 and pin 6 which is the - or ground pin.  Please don't burn down you house.  Fire has happened to laptops with unmolested lithium batteries, it is not just a recent thing with hoverboards.

Wally

 

[Elfen]

The pack can be bench tested by a 470K pull down to ground, between -enable pin 2 and pin 6 which is the - or ground pin.  Please don't burn down you house.  Fire has happened to laptops with unmolested lithium batteries, it is not just a recent thing with hoverboards.

The poor PowerBook 5300 got that negative reputation from when a couple of their Lithium-Ion batteries bursting in flames while being shipped.

Mine lasts for about 45 minutes, but I know it is just a matter of time before it goes. Which is annoying, because I still enjoy using my Pismo for typing, I've yet to find something to best its ease of use.

My experience with a "shorted" battery (On a ThinkPad 560e and a couple of PowerBooks), if you swap out the hard drive with a SSD unit, the battery seems to come back to life. In truth, the current draw against the battery is reduced from almost a couple of amps by the hard drive to just a dozen of so milliamps with the SSD.

With the ThinkPad 560e, the battery leaked and does not turn on the unit even when it is "fully" charged. When plugged in with its power pack, the hard drive sounds like a military jet starting up and then howls for a long time (though the howling eventually quiets down). Among the other laptops I have of that era, it is the slowest to boot and do everything else despite having the "most RAM" and "fastest CPU" in the collection. Eventually that drive died and I swapped it with a CF on a IDE Converter. Then something amazing happened... I turned it on without plugging it in. I thought I had it plugged in but I reassembled the unit after installing and securing the CF and its adapter to the inside of the machine and I never do that with a machine plugged in. So I tested the battery. It lasted over an hour, respectable for an old battery, especially from that time when battery life was just a couple of hours! It also charges faster, and naturally, things run quicker.

In experimenting, I found that it is the hard drive is the issue. They draw so much current, sometimes more than the system itself! If the lubrication inside the drive is drying up, but still runs, it will draw more current (as with my ThinkPad 560e). This can make a so-called good battery look bad.

Naturally battery life depends on it charge/discharge capabilities (as per my RC racing days), but under "normal use" (which is steady, constant and patterned) it makes a gradual downward slope. But when constantly stressed under abnormal situations, it seems to flatten out and end suddenly into a cliff dive to Zero. So one needs to look into other things that are going before pointing the fingers of blame and fault at the battery. An example - when capacitors fail they either open or short out. If you have a couple of caps on your logic board that are shorting out it will indeed show up similar to an "Ehph'ed up" Battery as they draw more current from it.

The battery on my Wallstreet G3 is in the same situation with the ThinkPad 560e - in bad shape. But in doing the same with its hard drive died and replaced it with a KingSpec 8GB IDE SSD, that battery seemed to have come back to life! Its charging and discharging cycle is shorter than normal (about 90 minutes for a battery that lasted 2 hours when new) but I chalk that up to the battery's age and the life it went through. (Same thing happened on my other Wallstreet and I replaced that drive with a 8GB CF and CF-to-IDE Adapter).

 

[rickrob]

I took a gamble and bought one of those batteries for my Pismo a few weeks ago.  It charged up and worked great.  I was kind of surprised to see that since it was probably sitting for years.

 

[techknight]

the battery in my 3400c is original and holds a full charge. about 2 hours or so. go figure. 

 

[J English Smith]

Great!!

 

[haemogoblin]

I took a gamble and bought one of those batteries for my Pismo a few weeks ago.  It charged up and worked great.  I was kind of surprised to see that since it was probably sitting for years.

Rickrob, where did you get your battery from?

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm tempted to buy one of these.

Not too long ago, I bought a brand new 3400C battery that had only been charged by the seller(someone I know) right before he sold it to me. It lasts 3+ hours. Surprisingly enough, I have had excellent luck with 3400/Kanga batteries with only one dead one out of four(the other 3 work for 2+ hours). Out of 5 Wallstreet/PDQ batteries, however, I think I have one good enough to let me move the computer(asleep) between rooms but that's about it. I have a battery that came in a Pismo that's good for about 10-15 minutes(it drops from 85% to 20% in a few seconds, and then down to nothing about a minute later) but it's the only one I have that shows any signs of life out of 3 or 4 Lombard/Pismo batteries.

If the batteries are good, it's certainly one of the best prices I've seen. Genuine Apple batteries fit better than anything else, and when good work better than anything except possibly Newertech. Newertech doesn't even make Pismo batteries anymore.

 

[Unknown_K]

Save the old dead batteries. Sooner or later with tech advanced we will probably be able to rip the old packs open and install a small battery inside that will last all day.

 

[bunnspecial]

Trust me, the only Mac batteries I dispose of are the cheap, dangerous Chinese ones.

I recently happily deposited a badly swelled aftermarket 15"(pre-Uni) MBP battery in the recycle box at work, but I keep all genuine Apple batteries and generally put a note on them as to their last-checked status. Granted properly testing a battery(at least for me) involves charging it all the way and then using the computer while it runs down. I've seen batteries that appeared fine but actually(probably) had dead cells that made dramatic capacity jumps. The Pismo I mentioned above is one such battery.

On the MBP I mentioned above, I actually bought it cheap at a flea market because the seller couldn't get it to boot on a 60W charger and a dead battery. I took the computer home, put a factory battery that I knew was good for ~30 minutes in it, and it booted right up on an 85W charger. I still use that computer regularly, and am actually going to try and put Sierra on it later this week. It's been one of my test systems for Beta OS X versions, although it was officially deprecated under Sierra.

EDIT:

By the way, if I were to come into a sudden windfall of money, I'd hit up Newertech for a couple of examples of every Powerbook battery they still sell. I have a couple of fairly new 12" ones that came with a computer-I actually bought the computer primarily for the batteries, as the 12" versions are NLA. For the time being they still sell Ti batteries along with Al 15" and 17" batteries.

Newertech batteries(not sure if they're afilliated with OWC, but it's where I always order from) are the only aftermarket batteries that, IMO, are worth buying unless you just want something that will get you from outlet to outlet or let you carry a laptop asleep for a few hours. I most recently bought a pair two-one for a white Macbook and the other for the 15" Pre-Uni I mentioned above. I need to get a black battery before they quit making them(even though my factory blackbook battery is decent).

Chinese off-brand batteries really are a crapshoot. I've ordered more than one(I think for white iBooks) that would charge out of the box or would discharge once and then never recharge. They were always good about exchanging them(sometimes without requiring a return), but I keep a sharpy handy near where I store my laptops and make a note of when It test a battery as good(along with the date). Most recently, I bought a Clamshell battery that would only charge halfway. The seller sent me a second for the cost of shipping(since the first was useable and they didn't want it back, I thought that was fair). The second work fine for the first few cycles, but now has the same symptom of only charging halfway. Fortunately, it will run the computer for an hour or a little over(under OS 9) and I don't generally haul that computer out of the house due to its weight and size.

 

[ziggy29]

I think I may have been very lucky. I bought an aftermarket battery for my Pismo on eBay (which is sort of Russian Roulette) probably 7-8 months ago for $15. Until the video got sick a couple months ago, I used it a lot and Coconut Battery reported 6600 mAh of charge, and it could go for close to 5 hours. It was the last one this seller had, and too bad -- now I'd buy about 5 more if I could! I have a cheap lower half of a supposedly working Pismo coming to me in the next few days and I hope to resurrect my old friend. But the batter, so far, has been really good.

I did have a 7200 mAh Newertech for it earlier, but I mothballed the Pismo years ago and left it in a garage for a few very hot Texas summers which killed it.  Obviously in hindsight I wish I kept it in climate controlled environments and didn't let it completely run out.

 

[ziggy29]

As an aside, yeah, I've thought about buying a couple more Newertech batteries for my 15" 1GHz TiBook while they are still available. That was another cheap buy a couple months ago and it came with a *real* Apple battery with 61 cycles reported AND more than 100% of the stated 4200 mAh life still available on full charge (full charge is 4482 mAh). I basically bought the whole thing for the market price of a new aftermarket battery (about $50)!

 

[bunnspecial]

Wanted to report that I ordered a battery and it arrived today.

The battery was dead flat on being unboxed(no surprise) and it took a few minutes of my Pismo being plugged for it to even register as "charging." Once the first LED on the side started flashing, though, it charged right up in probably ~2 hours(computer asleep).

I spent probably 45 minutes using it in Tiger/TenFourFox with the CPU pegged. The fan was running, and those of you who have these know that you really have to beat on them to get it on-the 466mhz Clamshell of about the same age didn't have a fan at all. The battery went down to 82% when I decided to call it quits. 

I'll need to use it some more tomorrow, as I want to calibrate the battery-a process that involves discharging it completely.

Next paycheck, I'm probably going to order a couple more of these while the guy still has them. Working Lombard/Pismo batteries are very difficult to find in my experience, and most of the aftermarket batteries out there are more expensive than these. I have two Pismos, plus a Lombard that sort of works(it hasn't acted nice since it took an unfortunate tumble) and another good working Lombard on the way. I'd like to have at least one working battery for each of them, or it would be great to run them in OS 9 with two batteries and get the 10 hour battery life that was advertised when new.

 

[J English Smith]

It's great that these are working out for folks. I have just enough working ones that I'm not ordering for now - I will probably regret that later, but I've just been too spendy of late. He's about the only option I've seen of late...and I've never heard of any "really great" battery receller service for these.

 

[ziggy29]

I'd like to have at least one working battery for each of them, or it would be great to run them in OS 9 with two batteries and get the 10 hour battery life that was advertised when new.

I have two Pismo batteries (well, two that work at all, I have three dead ones) -- one is an aftermarket 6600 mAh battery I've had for a couple years.  In Tiger, CoconutBattery still reports the full 6600 mAh charge when fully charged.   Another is an actual Apple battery with about 360 recharge cycles, give or take, that still has about 2/3 of its original charge (about 2900 mAh still there).  So between the two I have about 9500 mAh and can easily go over 8 hours, and I could probably get closer to 9 or 10 if I was a little more aggressive about battery-saving settings.  

Hope these continue to work well and continue to be available for a while.