>I have a friend that has an older ibook running Mac OS X (Jaguar, I >believe). I haven't dealt with these models much and didn't see >anything that would help her out. It's out of warranty so Apple's >not helping her either. > >Any time she restarts the computer her time has to be reset. If this >were a desktop model I'd say her battery had gone bad, but ibooks >don't have an internal PRAM battery, do they? Anyone have any >suggestions? I'm going to suggest zapping the PRAM first but if that >doesn't work what else can she try?
iBooks don't have a PRAM battery (PowerBooks do, but not iBooks I believe). I can think of three possible causes: 1. Fried logic board. Not very likely, and not much you can do about it other than fork up big bucks for a replacement. 2. More likely - messed up power manager chip. You can reset this - you'll have to look at the Apple Support web site to get the instructions on how to perform a reset for her specific iBook model - the instructions are slightly different for different models. You can also try a reset in Open Firmware - power up the iBook and immediately hold down the command, option, and O (oh, not zero) and F keys until the screen lights up and dumps you into an icky Open Firmware command line environment. Try these commands (without the quotes) - press return after each command - "reset-nvram" - "set-defaults" - "reset-all". The last command should cause the iBook to reboot and hopefully everything will now be squared away. You'll need to set the clock once more, but it might now start keeping the time correctly. 3. Still more likely, since you mention it is an older iBook - the rechargeable battery is shot. With the best of treatment, they'll still last only about 4-5 years tops. If you don't have the iBook plugged in and the main battery is dead, there isn't anyplace to get power to run the clock, since there isn't an internal PRAM/clock battery. Solution: keep it plugged in or get a new main battery (be ready to spend moderate bucks). If she has internet access that doesn't use dial up, there is also a gross nasty icky (but free!) work-around under OS X - go into the date-and-time system preference panel and turn on "set date and time automatically". Then every time the iBook boots up, it will reach out into the net and reset its own clock to match the time from the network. Since this happens at startup, it will look like the clock kept the right time and all will be well with the world. Hope this helps..... Jerry -- Jerry W. Ethington 245 Hawkeegan Drive Frankfort, KY 40601-3912 (502)223-5489 (502)682-2607 cellular jethington at mac.com "Quando omni, flunkus moritati." (When all else fails, play dead.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050426/f46f11ff/attachment.html
