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PB 1400c: Dead Batteries and CD drive?

LC_575

LC_575

6502
Just got in my new PB 1400c in today. Two batteries, and to be honest I'm not use if they work or not. It runs Mac OS 8.1, and the only indicator of battery status is the charge meter to the right of the clock.

Battery 1 indicates a full charge when inserted w/ AC power. Remove AC power, and within only a few moments the screen goes fuzzy and the system shuts down.

Battery 2 indicates an empty, or close to empty charge when inserted w/ AC power. Occasionally the lighting-bolt disappears, but the machine keeps running. I have not tried removing the AC power whilst running with this battery yet.

The CD drive seems to work. When installed, its indicator light will blink and and will continue blinking when a disc is inserted. Except any inserted disc will never mount. I have tried a few discs, all CD-R's, but they all work fine on every other (desktop) Mac I own, including my older LC575.

So what should I do here?

 
You could try cycling the batteries (charge fully, then run down to nothing - repeat several times), but chances are due to age they will never give you more than a few seconds, if at all. If you really need battery power, consider repacking them with standard rechargable cells. Also, clean off any crud/corrosion on the battery terminals and internal 1400 battery connector to see if it helps in registering the battery more reliably.

The CD drive - try cleaning the lens very carefully with a cotton bud and some isopropyl/rubbing alcohol. The drives used in 1400s are pretty common units for the day (equivalent PC laptops probably use a similar drive), so if faulty you can probably shoehorn another drive in there.

JB

 
Also: Does anyone know how to get the 1400c's IR port to communicate with a bondi blue iMac's IR port?

 
Also: Does anyone know how to get the 1400c's IR port to communicate with a bondi blue iMac's IR port?
Click to expand...
Apple IR File Transfer in the Classic Mac OS, or AppleTalk and standard File Sharing set up to use the IR port.

I used that method for quite a while until I got a WaveLAN card for my 1400.

 
Not sure yet how the batts are, but I might as well ask now: How would I put in my own NiMH cells?
Click to expand...
There are various guides online that tell you how to go about this. Basically involves cracking open the battery, and resoldering tabs onto replacement cells (go for batteries which already have the solder tabs, otherwise it's a pain to solder).

Regarding the CD drive: I forgot about this site, which details a possible fix for your 1400 lens not reading any media:

http://home.comcast.net/~gionpeters/hhhh/pb1400.htm

(at the bottom of the page)

 
Some updates: Battery 1 appears to work after all. I let the PB boot from it, and it got to the desktop no trouble. Haven't tested how long it lasts though.

Battery 2 is completely dead - does not charge at all. I have disassembled it, and instead of discovering standard AA size cells, there are four long, fat cells, putting out a total of 9.6v. Apparently they're size "4/3A." Would it be possible to just replace these four with 8 1.2v AA cells? Or must I use these odd 4/3A cells?

 
One little thing you need to be aware of if changing out the CD-ROM drive - the 6x and 8x units actually use a notebook hard drive connector to connect to the adapter board, rather than a notebook ATAPI connector like 95% of notebook CD-ROM drives out there...in my experience drives with this connector are quite hard to find. I managed to find one for my 1400 - a Hitachi unit out of a ThinkPad cicra 1997, however I'm now realising that I can't find any drivers that will make it work under OS 9. All I can say is - good luck!

For what its worth, the 12x unit, on the other hand has a standard notebook ATAPI connector...drivers allowing this will make your job a whooole lot easier :)

 
Get a copy of Battery Amnesia or (better still if it is in your Extras folder) use Apple's own Battery Recondition software (designed for the era of NiMh batteries) and run the discharge/recharge cycle 5-10 times. If NiMh cells are taking a charge at all, they can often be brought up through cycling from a runtime of a minute or less to one of 60-90 mins, and maybe more. That's enough for most purposes in a 1400 these days.

NiMh cells are often way, way better to have in old machines than are old Lithium Ion cells, which mostly are just dead by now. A further advantage of NiMh cells is that it is reasonably easy to recell a battery, since they don't have a habit of exploding in the way that Lithium Ion cells can — though NiMh cells can literally melt metal in seconds if you touch them together the wrong way, and so they do need careful handling. You don't want to be jinging them around loosely in your pants pockets, believe me.

 
There also are 2nd party 1400 batteries still available for the 1400, though at a high cost. Probably the best deal out there are the ones that Wegener Media sells. They go for around $45 (see URL below). While they are new old stock, if you cycle them well, they will give about 45 minutes to an hour of use. A disadvantage of these batteries is that battery reconditioning only seems to work with Apple brand Ni-Mh batteries. So all you can do with these ones is to discharge and charge to build them up.

A whole lot easier than doing battery surgery. But, the runtime is not fabulous.

http://www.wegenermedia.com/14xxbatt.htm

 
Oh yes, and I echo the advice re the 12x drive. Quite easy to do the drive swap on that model, you just have to find the right drive to implant and then the swap can be done in about 15 minutes. The dang front betzel is the tricky part - very thin plastics around the screw holes, use extreme caution when removing and replacing.

 
No drive swap's needed: managed to fix it using Byrd's link. FYI It's the 12x model.

I am not interested in a replacement battery unit, since I can't imagine something already 13 years old being reliable for very long. I'd rather rebuild the dead one I have.

So far the working battery seems to be getting progressively better, from an uptime of just 5 seconds to almost an hour now, and counting.

 
Argh! I just spent the last 2 hours trying to fix the drive again. It was working fine until this morning, and suddenly it just stopped successfully mounting disks again. Any ideas?

 
Adjusting the pot on the CD drive increases the power of the laser; the adjustment can only go so far. Try it a little more (and I mean tiny adjustment), to see how you go.

 
An update: I have attempted to manufacture a replacement battery pack, using Battery 2. I put in two 4xAA battery packs, wired in series, and loaded with 8 2500mAH NiMH AA batteries. It puts out 10v, the same as Battery 1 with rounding.

The Powerbook will boot, but only for that 2 second delay it has before the hard drive spins up. The second that happens, the screen doesn't get enough power and the powerbook shuts down.

I think this happening because the old battery pack put out 3500mAH, and these only put out 2500mAH. The hard drive uses up 500mA, which is a LOT.

So does anyone know a place/site that sells very high capacity AA batteries, such as 3500 or even 4000 mAH?

 
you MUST charge each cell INDIVIDUALLY to equalizing charges of each and every other cell of the battery pack you are rebuilding.

this is a VERY VITAL AND IMPORTANT STEP that most people often forget. your battery is only as strong as your weakest cell.

you could have a 6-cell battery, and 5 of those 6 cells are 80% charge, but 1 of the 6 cells is only a 20% charge.

your battery is only as good as your 20% charged cell. the 80% batteries will charge to 100% allowing only the 20% charged battery to charge 40% and thats it. it wont charge no more.

 
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