Internal battery for Powerbook G3 Bronze

Matsaki

Matsaki

Registered
Looking, looking and looking,
But I cant find no information if there is a motherboard battery as well on the Powebook G3 Bronze machine or only the one I find under the CD Reader (6V)

Also looking for a nice app that can tell me the staus of the internal battery and can reset the power charge as I have problem recharging the main battery I want to see that the problem is not this before i buy a new internal battery.

/Matsaki

Ps. Love this forum :) Ds.
 
Matsaki said:
Looking, looking and looking,
But I cant find no information if there is a motherboard battery as well on the Powebook G3 Bronze machine or only the one I find under the CD Reader (6V)

Also looking for a nice app that can tell me the staus of the internal battery and can reset the power charge as I have problem recharging the main battery I want to see that the problem is not this before i buy a new internal battery.
Click to expand...


I have done a lot of disassembly/assembly recently on my G3 Lombard (bronze). The only internal battery is the "backup battery" (6 V) you mentioned. If you want to replace it, try

http://members.aol.com/dnmonk/powerbooks/index.html
http://www.pbfixit.com/cart/catalog/product_163_Lombard_or_Pismo_PRAM_Battery.html

but I've seen them a bit cheaper on other sites, just didn't bookmark :)

Also, consider resetting PMU e.g.

http://everythingmacintosh.com/technotes/go.em/General/71

goodluck,

Erik
 
Thansk Erik for your help but:

No go :(

I have replaced the internal battery, Made power preset, preset of PRAM etc and STILL I have to fill in all keychain passwords etc after a restart even if I have the power supply connected all the time.

I was also hoping that the main battery woul be able to charge (I dont know if it's dead) after changing the internal battery, but it wount even give me a blink from the indicator led light on the battery.

Whats going so wrong. WHY is there not a nifty app also for the internal battery status :mad:

If I only had the money for a new PB G4 :p
 
Maybe I am confused, but filling in keychain passwords is not a battery problem. If you are running OS X, go to keychain access and unlock it. You will be asked for your password. Go to the Edit menu and select settings. Uncheck all of the boxes. Now you will not be asked for a password everytime. Just make sure it is only you that is using the computer.

going to www.macupdate.com I found two programs you might be interested in.
X-Charge X 1.0
BatteryStatsX 2.0b1
 
Matsaki said:
Also looking for a nice app that can tell me the staus of the internal battery and can reset the power charge as I have problem recharging the main battery I want to see that the problem is not this before i buy a new internal battery.
Click to expand...

To test the internal battery--
Power up your PowerBook with the main battery installed.
Set the Clock to correct time and date, if it is not correct.
Shut your powerbook off using shutdown command.
Disconnect the main power plug from you PowerBook.
Pull the main battery out, leave out for about 10 minutes. (no power connected to your PowerBook)
Reinstall the main battery, and boot the system (use the power adapter if you have to) If the time has reset (to 12:00:00, and date to (1970?, 1969) or the date is completely wrong, then your internal back up battery is dead, and should be replaced. You should have this replaced at an Apple authorized repair shop. Your PowerBook is probably more than 4 years old, if the main battery has never been replaced, then it is probably bad too (doesn't keep a charge) and is much more expensive than the little internal battery, unfortunately.
 
Thanks guys!
I tried your suggestions and the internal battery seams ok as testing the way described. BUT the keychain settings is correct (compared with my desktop computer) but still looses the memory after restart :(

/Matsaki
 
Right, keychain should have nothing to do with battery, we could have told you that if you had mentioned anything about keychain in your original post!

Although you seem to have a bad main battery (won't hold charge) too. On that end, can you get your hands on another battery, ensure the problem is your battery (likely) and not your G3's charging capability (less likely)? Do yo uhave any other expansion bay modules, do they work in the expansion bay? But likely is just an old battery, I have two for my G3 bronze: the one I use all the time (i.e. when the machine is plugged in) is virtually dead (holds about 20 minutes worth of charge) and the one I use when the machine is mobile (infrequently) holds about 2 hours of charge.

So the keychain sounds like a 10.3 problem. How about the little things - have you recently repaired permissions (Disk Utility)? Especially if you upgraded to 10.3, or have recently installed any software, this is a potential source of such problems.
 
Hi Erik,
Thanks for your reply.
No I cant find another battery to try and I dont have any expansion bay :(

What I was thinking about was that the battery is totally dead. Not the smalles blink from the lead lights on the battery.

And about the keychaine I have tried evrything. Permission repairs, prebindings, restet PRAM etc. etc.
 
Hi Matsaki,

Matsaki said:
What I was thinking about was that the battery is totally dead. Not the smalles blink from the lead lights on the battery.

And about the keychaine I have tried evrything. Permission repairs, prebindings, restet PRAM etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, it sounds like your battery is dead. If you have no other way to test, that is the best you can do for now.



About the keychain, the passwords etc are stored in a file located at:

~/Library/Keychains/username

where "username" is your username. Check on your mac, can you find that file?

Maybe the file is corrupted and needs to be thrown away. You could try making a backup copy of it, give the backup a different name and then throw the original in the trash (empty the trash). Then re-enter new keychain info. After you have entered some keychain info: Is the properly named file named and located as it should be? Then do a restart (or whatever causes the keychain to be forgotten) - is the file still there after you restart? Is the info remembered now?

If this doesn't work, maybe you have a buggy install of Keychain Access (that is what the application is called in 10.2, not sure about 10.3)? You could try reinstalling the application.
 
Actually, before you do all that, go to your home>Library>Preferences. Trash the com.apple.keychainaccess.plist. Empty the trash, then open keychain (in the Utility folder). Unlock it. You will be asked your password. Now it shouldn't give you any problems.
 
hey, I looked for a keychain prefs file but didn't see it, just did the search again and there it is. doh!

I mistakenly figured that because Cheryl didn't suggest deleting prefs first time 'round, and I didn't see the file, there wasn't a prefs file for keychain.

Try deleting the prefs first of course!
 
Maybe there is another problem???
Because when I restart the Computer I have the "?" flashing before the system can find the proper startup system.

I'v dun all the things I know to fix this, with choose startup disk, fix permissions, prebinding etc. etc.

Could this cause the keychain problem, and what could cause this error?
 
Matsaki,

First a few more questions about the "?"
Do you mean the "?" flashes for a bit, then the system finds the disk and continues startup OK? Or do you always have to restart if you see the "?"?
Does the "?" problem happen every time you boot or only sometimes?
Do you also have this problem when booting from an exernal disk or CD?
And, is the keychain problem gone now?

You have listed three problems with this machine:

1 Unable to charge main battery
2 Keychain passwords not remembered by system
3 Flashing "?" at startup

Does your Lombard still show all three problems?
Does it show other problems like random crashes after successful startups?
 
Matsaki said:
Yes all problems are still there :( But the battery thing must be because it's dead I think.
Click to expand...

On the keychain, did you try trashing the prefs file (Cheryl's better suggestion)? If that didn't help, did you try trashing your actual keychain (my suggestion)?

You didn't answer any of my other questions about the "?" or random crashes. You also never to say for sure - do you have 10.3 on the Lombard?


On the "?" it is likely a hardware issue, I assume there are zero peripherals hooked up and did you do the check the RAM routine, for example: http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39423


It is hard to help more without knowing the answers to those other questions.

But I'lll tell you this: When my Lombard went strange I started out thinking it was the internal battery. It had miscellaneous bizarre behavior including boot failure, PMU problems and freezes, and it just got worse over about a week until it was almost unbootable, certainly unuseable. When the internal battery and RAM checks didn't help I figured it was my cpu, it is very common for these to go out from too much heat over time on the Lombard. But there is no definitive test for CPU, you just have to try another one in there. I replaced the CPU (eBay $130 US) and it works flawlessly ever since. If you decide to replace it I can tell you what I learned was important, I'd have to dig it up - one of the Lonestar versions is more reliabe than the others, I think the number was 3.6. Or you could if you can afford to pay more than auction buy from the guy who runs powerbookmedic.com, his reputation is fantastic. He might help with troubleshooting too, shoot him an email.
 
Hi again,
And sorry for not being very clear. Yes I trashed everything. I did not have any crashes so far :) and I run 10.3.1 system.

I will for sure check the RAM suggestion but I hope to God that it's not the CPU!!!

It looks like the powerbookmedic.com don't exist any more :(
 
Matsaki said:
Hi again,
And sorry for not being very clear. Yes I trashed everything. I did not have any crashes so far :) and I run 10.3.1 system.

I will for sure check the RAM suggestion but I hope to God that it's not the CPU!!!

It looks like the powerbookmedic.com don't exist any more :(
Click to expand...

Weird keychain problem. My experience has been exhausted, you need others to chime in.

That's exactly what I said about the CPU! Very easy to replace, but not easy to buy!

Sure pbm still exists (?); the link in my post above works fine for me, but here is the URL if it doesn't work for you:

http://www.powerbookmedic.com/
 
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