G4 Powerbook Battery not charging

[Marsh]

I have a G4 TI Powerbook model number M5884. It uses a m6091 battery. I;m running OS X 10.4. The old battery I have ran for about 30 minutes and just bought a new one which ran for about 2 hours. I noticed each time I ran both batteries, they would not recharge once beyond what ever the % was after I shut them down. Someone said I should let them run down to 0% before you recharge them to "excercise" them. OK did that. Now I have two batteries that will not charge at 0%. The poerbook does run off the power adapter but will not charge. In "More Info" in "About this Mac" it says the charger is not charging the battery. Yesterday, after trying many other posted solutions, I took the battery out, brushed off the contact on both the battery and powerbook and squooshed the battery up against the contacts and held it their and saw the charging lightning bolt in the menubar briefly and was able to bring the charge up the battery to 3% - but not beyond that applying the same rudimentry technique. I've reset the PRAM, trashed my power management preferences, etc. No fix. I saw a web site somewhere that had some nice images and instructions on taking the back off the powerbook and checking your battery to power adaptor connections. Does anyone know where this site/page is and is this a possible solution. Does it sound like a hardware problem?

Many thanks again,

Marsh

[derekhed]

Have you tried this hint? (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2003071622115360)

[trevor]

You've been given some bad advice.

For a real look at how Lithium Ion batteries work, check out here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030314081843218

As far as the problem that you are seeing, the first thing I would advise is that you reset your PMU. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

Trevor

[Marsh]

I've reset the PMU and did the reset of the PRAM and no result. Any hardware suggestions?

[Marsh]

The battery will not charge at all. I have tried ALL of the hints listed here, and others...
- Reset the PMU (reset button on rear)
- Reset the PRAM (opt-cmd-P-R on boot)
- Reset-all in Open Firmware (opt-cmd-O-F on boot)
- Removing / Re-inserting battery repeatedly
All to no effect. The battery is recognized, but it firmly sits at 0%.

[Marsh]

OK, you're not going to believe this... but it is charging. After all the attempts and all I opened the back of my powerbook and looked around - Like I know what I'm looking for! Then I turned off my desktop background which was Tiger's nature images changing every few minutes and it started charging again. It now at 31% and rising. For anyone else who has this problem, try the simple option of allowing your powerbook to charge doing nothing or the bare minimum!

Thanks!

[Soliton]

Hey,

We've ordered in (Apple re-seller here) 3 brand new 15" Powerbooks and the battery will not charge on any of them. Just stays at 0%.

I've tried all the steps you've tried, even down to changing desktops, and nothing has fixed this.

Under System Profiler, it shows the battery as connected but NOT charging.

Just a heads up that there's definitely a bad batch. This all came out of the factory in early-mid December.

Sucks. Another RMA.

[bkid]

Hi,

i read your post about the PowerBook 15" batteries not charging, and i have the same issue. i bought mine in mid December from an apple store and the battery wont charge. i am from the Uk and the serial number ends in JTH UB. the problem is now sorted out with apple sending me a replacement free of charge.

[thrillseeker]

Hi everybody!

As it seems, this is a typical issue on late 15"-PowerBooks (1.67GHz). Since a few weeks, my PowerBook shows exactly the same symptoms (I tried two different batteries and two different chargers).

Did anybody find a solution, or could someone confirm which part of the PowerBook has to be replaced to repair it?

Greetings from Giessen, Germany :-)
- Stefan