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nicklas76

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2020
1
0
Hi,

I powered up my 234 months old (according to coconut battery) Powerbook G4 last week. I check in on it from time to time but it's been 4-5 years since last time.

The first thing I noticed, after installing 10.5, was "No battery available". So I guessed the battery has finally died after almost 20 years. So I ordered a new replacement battery which should be a replacement for the A1078-battery from Cameron Sino.

It arrived yesterday and it was charged about 50% according to the battery test button. I plugged it in and to my surprise the PowerBook said "No battery available" about this battery too. Very strange.

I have done all the tricks like reseting NVRAM/PRAM (opt+cmd+pr and wait 3-4 chimes) and cmd+opt+shift+powerbutton for 5 seconds and wait for the beep and flashing sleep-LED and finally a PMU-reset (both the key sequence and short circuit the PMU-reset circuit on the logic board) without any result, still "No battery available".

I did pick out the PRAM-module and measured the battery, the voltage was only 2V instead of 3.7V which is too low. And the function of the Powerbook indicates this too, it always asks for the date and doesn't wake from sleep plus I have to remove the power after a shutdown for it to start again.

I have tested using the old battery too in case the replacement battery is faulty and actually for a short moment of time the last led on the battery test did blink very fast. Like it actually received some charge.

The question is, does the bad battery in the PRAM-module causing the Powerbook to not see the old and new main battery? And also since the battery in the PRAM-module is rechargeable will it slowly charge up to 3.7V after some time? The Powerbook has been powered on several hours now for the last week.
 
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