I got a Pismo recently for very cheap. The good news is that, while it was sold for parts, it has a 60gb HD, 256mb of RAM, and boots right up (once I unplugged the seemingly dead PRAM battery). The bad news is that I've noticed two problems that I can't quite figure out.
First, It has an Apple battery, which originally seemed dead, but after being plugged in for an hour or so it started charging. It now shows more than 3800mAh left, according to a battery utility, but it takes forever to charge. The estimated time to charge shows around 8 hours, and while it does continue to charge, it only reached about 60% after 12 hours or so. It also discharges randomly. It says that the estimated time left is an hour or so and discharges normally, but then it will sometimes drop down to zero almost instantly. Because the main battery just needed to be recharged, I thought the PRAM battery might be the same way. After plugging it back in and allowing it to charge for a while the computer will boot, and the battery seems to act normally. It reached 100% charge after an hour or so, and seemed to do fine running on battery power until it suddenly lost all power. The only way to get it to start again was to unplug both batteries. I plugged the PRAM back in and left it overnight, and after a while it was charging normally again, but this time it lost all power even when plugged in. Is this the sign of a bad PRAM battery, a bad main battery, or something else, like the power board? Is there any way to know for sure without just replacing all the parts (I don't have any spare Pismos and can't afford to buy the spare parts unless I know for sure what the problem is). Also, if this makes any difference, the battery is recognized and charged/discharged the same way in either bay, but the battery utility can only read the charge information when it is in the right bay, the left bay just shows zero for everything. The other problem is that the power plug sometimes needs to be twisted before the computer will recognize it. I'm assuming the sound card is going bad, but would it be possible to fix this myself since it hasn't actually broken yet? I'm not the best at soldering, but if it saves me $25 I'm willing to try it. Also, is there any way this could be contributing to the other problem in some way? This is my first Pismo, and I was only able to it because it was so cheap, so I'm hoping this is something simple that won't take a lot of time and money to fix. Hopefully someone will know what is wrong here. Thanks, Steven -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Books, a group for those using G3 iBooks and PowerBooks (we run a separate list for G4 'Books). The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g-books Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
