>Is this a fact, Marc? Unplugging my pram battery and letting the power may
>solve all the problems? I thought that it might, but I've gotten more
>dubious now the pram seems dead. I wonder, how does it cause a problem if
>it's dead?
>I will probably try opening it up and unplugging the pram anyway, before I
>send it out. The topside disassemble is not so bad; it's getting the pram
>out of there that's scary.
It's possible; as you note, mainly it's easy enough to do that it's
worth a try. It could conceivably cause a problem by providing not
quite enough power (or sporadic, cycling power) to the chip. Kind of
like how we used to experiment on Apple ][s and Atari 2600s by
quickly removing and restoring AC power to see what interesting
random behaviour we could create. ;)
Another thing that may not have been clear in my first note is that
when you first try it out (after leaving it unpowered) you should
leave the PRAM battery disconnected - just plug in the AC, nothing
else. Later try the main battery if it boots and runs ok on AC - see
if it can charge and then run off the battery. If everything checks
out, try the original PRAM battery last - let it charge for a while,
then try booting and running it off the main battery again. If that
makes it flake out again, repeat the whole procedure and this time
try the new PRAM battery without bothering to put it in the case -
just plug it in loose. The idea here is to change one thing at a time
and isolate components. It's very easy to rush things and do too much
at once, so that even if you get it working you don't really know
why. Be slow and methodical.
When you reconnect the AC to the completely drained 2400, it'll
probably start up immediately (click, chime, boot). Don't panic if it
doesn't and instead gives you just the click ("of death") - just turn
it off with the hard-power button on the back and try again, several
times if necessary. You'll know it's off when the solid green light
comes on - this is normal and documented in your user manual (it
indicates that the power manager code has been fully lost and needs
to be reloaded from the booting OS, which is after all the whole
point of this voodoo). Powerbooks in general and especially the 2400
can be extremely flaky to get back up after zapping the power
manager, so be persistent and don't panic if it misbehaves; remember
all you're doing in this entire procedure is altering software state
(primarily in the power manager chip and PRAM), and software changes
can always be fixed.
--
Marc Sira | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can't play with words, what good are they?"
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