Re-Celled 540c battery

[beachycove]

I have recently managed to recell a 540c battery with new NiMhs, and have (once I was inspired to trash the Emmpathy Preferences from the System Folder) also managed to get Emmpathy to restore the battery's "intelligent" settings. Everything now shows up as agreeable ... except that the charge is 0% and the machine is not charging the battery.

Emmpathy reports that the machine is running on "Batt Pwr," which the documentation tells me is shorthand for something like, "The charging circuitry's not doing the trick, old son."

Any ideas on how I convince the machine to charge the battery? I have already reset the Power Manager (a few times), so that's seemingly not the answer. Is it a matter of fasting and praying, and, in keeping with that theme, leaving the machine sitting plugged in in prophetic hope for a time, two times, and half a time? Could it be the dreaded pram problem? The machine has evidently been dormant for years, though it looks almost new.

Utility-wise, I only have Emmpathy, but I gather that there is another 500-series utility in the etherworld; might it conceivably do the business?

 

[equill]

A hit (sometimes) or miss (often) method that I have had tempered success with in the past is to begin the process with Apple's Intelligent (hah!) Battery Reconditioner before passing on to EMMpathy to finish the job.

Connect Ye PB to the (already) active adapter and boot it. Withdraw the PB's batteries each about 1cm. Open IBR. When the app. whinges that there is no battery in the righthand bay, click the battery into place. If the denizens of Olympus are feeling benign, the app. will launch into its opening quiz of the battery. If said doO are actually feeling benevolent, the app. will do a precharge of the batt. before interrogating it further. If the app. then invites you to return the battery to Apple (as if ...), do the whole again. Five times. If still no go, put the batt. aside for another day, or for recelling.

If the doO are also beneficent, the battery will then take a charge. Give it half-an-hour. If it does not conflagrate in that time because of dead shorts, quit EBR and launch EMMpathy. Do the Sleep Drain Bugfix, look at the battery data table for the starting parameters so that you will know whether charging for a time has produced any improvement, especially in mAh of retained charge. The completion of the process can be speeded up if you have a second adapter and an external VST SmartCharger 500, but not everyone has ...

The essence of the deal is to get enough charge into the batt. with IBR first for it to be able to do a Sylvester and have its brain re-ordered by EMMpathy. But the batt. has to rilly, rilly wish to be resuscitated.

de

 

[beachycove]

Will do.

 

[beachycove]

... and that did the trick, or I should say that Intelligent Battery Recondition did the trick. Emmpathy had gotten the battery recognized, but seemingly could not get it into such a state as to enable recharging. IBR did the "pre-charge" repeatedly over 10 mins or so, and I now have a lightning bolt and one bar and counting in the Control Strip.

One further query: hitherto the machine would shut down after 10-15 mins if put to sleep. A known backup battery anomaly, perchance, or buggered power-related hardware? Go on, give me something else to celebrate!

 

[beachycove]

I posted too soon. The battery charged only briefly, and is now resisting a recharge altogether, including via the aforementioned utilities. However, the machine recognizes its presence and EMMpathy will report accurately about it (e.g., 0% charge). I think I'll leave it plugged in for a few days and see what transpires, and still suspect the dead backup battery might be the source of the trouble, but wonder if a transplant of a spare logic board I have lying around would be a good idea.... The spare was known to work a couple of years ago — came out of a machine that basically fell to bits and so had to be disassembled for parts.

A basic problem is that the machine seems every few minutes not to recognize that it is plugged in - which means I get a "plug in your adapter" message. But the behaviour is also changing, even if it is erratic; it used to shut down randomly, now it goes to sleep briefly after a low power warning.

I reckon that the trouble's the power manager/backup battery. i know from experience that this can cause all sorts of odd behaviour on other powerbooks of my acquaintance. However, maybe the changes are good, an indication that something is getting juice that was not before: we'll see.

 

[equill]

The principal difficulty is that the backup battery, which allows graceful shutdown and preservation of the contents of memory when the system battery is close to exhaustion, does not itself begin to recharge after it has been exhausted during storage before the system battery has reached close to working voltage again. Otherwise, only leaving the PB on the adapter for anything up to a week is likely to get enough charge (30-50mAh) into the backup for a return to quasi-normality of power management, and even that may not work if the system battery is beyond recall. In your case, with new cells in the system battery, there may be a better outcome.

It is unlikely that the backup (which is a secondary rechargeable cell, not a primary cell as in desktops, and very rugged in my experience) is itself unserviceable.

de

 

[beachycove]

A thought has occurred: is it possible for the power supply to fluctuate so as to a) cause random shutdown and B) fail to charge a battery and yet c) start the machine up most of the time?

I have another on which the casing is no more, and the plug is busted, but the innards appear to be OK. I could transplant these innards into the intact one if this was thought a possible culprit.

I went to the length of transplanting the other logic board into the machine last night. It won't even see the battery.

 

[Bunsen]

If you're talking about fluctuations in the mains AC power, the regulated external Powerbook PS should buffer the PB from most of that, in theory. Assuming it's not strangely broken itself.

 

[beachycove]

No, I was thinking of the power brick.

 

[equill]

It sounds as if you and Bunsen are referring to the same animal by differing binomial nomenclature. If the AC adapter (to throw in another appellation) can power the PB in the absence of a battery, you have little concern about its aptitude. It would take a wide departure of your AC mains voltage (120VAC?) from its mean to have much effect on the DC out from the adapter (24VDC).

You will not have had time for the soak approach to rechargeing the internal backup battery yet, but I suggest that it is worth the time, even in the absence of the battery, to leave the PB attached to the active AC adapter for that purpose.

de

 

[beachycove]

Well, the thing has been well and truly 'soaked' with power after having been left plugged in for weeks, and I continue with the same troubles. It is frustrating because the machine is in great shape, I have a re-celled battery, it has 32MB of ram, and I have an actual use for the unit if I can only get it to work reliably.

The battery is recognized and checks out OK in Emmpathy and Lind utilities. Its little computer seems to be working fine, in short. I have actually gotten the battery to recharge (to 1752 ma) some 5 times since I last posted, but otherwise recharging of the battery simply will not happen. Erratic recharging is not ideal, but the specific problem encountered is that even when charged, and the machine is plugged in, the battery drains down over a period of 5-6 days. So it gets juice but then gets it no more. Works a treat like that for the time being, mind you, either plugged in or running on battery power.

When the battery is empty, however, and the machine is plugged in, I get warnings every 5 mins. or so that the machine is about to shut down for lack of power (which it sometimes does, though mostly the warning goes away). Emmpathy reports that the machine is running on 'Batt Pwr' always, even when plugged in; Intelligent Battery Recondition almost always requests that I plug the machine in rather than that I insert a battery, even when it is already plugged in and there is no battery inserted, though occasionally IBR will do what it is meant to do and test/recharge the battery (hence 3 of those 5 recharges - the other two happened normally when the gods smiled).

My theory for the present is that either the power supply is not supplying adequate power (though I haven't the equipment to verify that theory), or that there continues to be the usual problems with the power manager software due to the backup battery being defunct (as Equill has so often stated, if the battery will not charge properly, the backup battery can hardly do so, either, QED).

Theories as to the most likely culprit welcome. Power manager or those capacitors in the PS?

 

[beachycove]

Thanks to a fellow member, I very recently sourced a replacement power supply for my wayward 540c and even more wayward re-celled 540c battery, of which I posted here long ago.

I can now report several things of interest.

First, using this new PS, the re-celled battery charges and all is well.

Second, using the variety of utilities available for the 540c, I have managed to revive the original battery that came to me with the machine, and was astonished to get a 70 minute (!) charge out of it on the first cycle after perhaps 7-10 years of neglect. Try that with a Lithium Ion cell. Total running time is now reported as up to 3.5 hours with both batteries, but this remains to be confirmed.

Third, and most interesting, the power plug on the new-to-me PS is missing the little black 4-hole plastic centre, which for some reason broke away in days of yore. This piece of plastic in the centre of the plug is meant to guide the relevant bits of metal to their appointed goal when you plug the thing in: male on the machine, female on the PS connector. All that is left on the latter are the THREE small female receptacles. The fourth of the holes in the plug is evidently a dummy.

I found with my original PS that it would very occasionally charge the battery and run the machine, which leads me to wonder whether the trouble with the original might be that little black plastic 4-holed centre preventing a good connection being made. The trouble is not, as might be thought, the usual solder on the power connector at the logic board, as I have had the logic board out and have done a close inspection — it is sound.

I am inclined to sand this offending piece of plastic down on the original PS so as to allow for a better mating of the connections, i.e., to allow the male connectors to go further into the black plastic thing which contains the female connectors. However, before I try this small piece of surgery, have any others experienced similar flakiness in relation to the power connector on a 540c?

 

[tomlee59]

I haven't experienced any unusual 540-specific problems, but power bricks in general are notorious for developing intermittents of various kinds. The most common failure mode is for one (or more) internal wire to fatigue to the point of breakage. For a time, wiggling/bending/supplications-to-the-deity-of-your-choice may work, but eventually it stops altogether. I would measure the voltages while (gently!) flexing the cable first.