iBook battery decalibrates itself with use - what do I do?

[featherwhisker]

I recelled an iBook G4 battery a while back and every ~ 10 charges I have to recalibrate it by booting into OS X and running the installer until the battery voltage drops low enough the machine turns off (usually around an hour after it goes below 0% and the status breaks, decreases by 15 minutes every time i recharge and repeat)

What happens is that it starts at charging up to 72% and then every charge it drops the max charge by 2 or 3 percent until the max charge is 44% then stops. Why does it keep doing this? Why does it keep drifting towards making the vast majority of the battery unusable? I've recalibrated it like 5 times by now

 

[Bug-Creator]

Does it really stop charging (green light on the cable) or does it just report 100%?

I exclusively run my PPC stuff under MorphOS and with the 17" PB calibration both for an aftermarket and genuine Apple battery only last for 2-3 cycles.

Afterward it runs on an empty battery for >1h and then charges 30-45min after being 100%.
Watching the actual voltage gives a better clue on state of charge (no idea if that information is presented in OSX).

Real capacity of both seems to be 60-70% of new so they are still pretty good.

 

[featherwhisker]

Does it really stop charging (green light on the cable) or does it just report 100%?

I exclusively run my PPC stuff under MorphOS and with the 17" PB calibration both for an aftermarket and genuine Apple battery only last for 2-3 cycles.

Afterward it runs on an empty battery for >1h and then charges 30-45min after being 100%.
Watching the actual voltage gives a better clue on state of charge (no idea if that information is presented in OSX).

Real capacity of both seems to be 60-70% of new so they are still pretty good.

It starts going green-orange back and forth at around 50-60% and will keep on doing that until it goes to 70%

The issue is it never goes to 100% and will have half the battery power be unusable since the machine will instantly go to sleep if it thinks its 0%

 

[Bug-Creator]

It starts going green-orange back and forth

My guess is that the new cells are so much out of spec compared to what Apple programmed in 20+ years ago that they values simply make no sense.

It does seem that the controller thinks "full" stops charging and turns on the green light only have the battery drop below the charging threshold shortly after.

Could be a dead cell or a bad solder point any extra resistance in the circuit would make that behavior plausible.