Battery won't charge, and other problems

[nstang]

I am running 10.3.9 on a Powerbook G4. I was away from my computer for a few weeks during the holidays, but when I got back in 2009 I found that:
1.) My battery will not charge. The light on the power connection sometimes goes amber, but the battery never charges. The power icon in the upper right hand corner still has the 'plug' icon.
2.) Whenever the power is disconnected, the computer shuts down.
3.) After losing power, if the computer is restarted it resets the date to January 1, 1969 (or thereabouts). It does not do this if the computer is properly shut down, or restarted.
4.) I ran a Shell script in Terminal to determine the properties of the battery, and the information I got was: BatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=4041,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=179,"Current"=0,"Voltage"=5549,"Flags"=1090519173,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400
5.) I have run a PMU reset, and it does nothing.

Any suggestions?

[joe_burban]

How old is your battery?

As far as I know, the batteries have a shelf life as well as a cycle count life.

Last year, I had something similar -- the count was about 250 or 300, I don't remember the age of the battery. My only solution was to replace the battery... and, I did chase other options before forking out $100.

Good luck.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally Posted by nstang

BatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=4041,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=179,"Current"=0,"Voltage"=5549,"Flags"=1090519173,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400

Looks pretty dead to me.

[nstang]

Thanks for your suggestions. I bought my battery last Fall. Isn't it a little too soon for it to be dead?

[nstang]

one more data point: my computer turns on and works fine without the battery plugged in. in a different thread someone suggested this means that my battery is the problem. is that correct?