>My first PB100 has entered my life (right behind my first 190) and I'd >sure like to make the thing usable. Are there any sources for the main >batteries internals? Alternatively, how about replacing the L-A cells >with NiCads?
The one poster mentioned ebatts; as far as replacing the innards with say NiCDs my concern would be that the power circuitry of the powerbook is made for slamming a pretty good constant current into lead-acid; I would open the PB up and disable power feed into the battery as I think that using the PB with the battery in place but filled with NiCDs would damage the NiCds pretty quickly. And then you'd have to rig a charger for the NiCDs somehow. A really neat thing to find is the "Lind" external battery pack. The footprint of the pb100 and a little under an inch thick, it will power your pb100 for 4 hrs or so. You charge them with the pb100 supply; you can't charge and use it to power the PB at the same time. I got one on clearance from someplace when I got my first powerbook (the pb100, about 4 years ago). Even better, this pack is standard NiCD (someone on the pb100 list posted the exact cell model once, but I forget) cells, with charging circuitry and a nice LED status panel in front of them. So, if you find one that's dead, a few $ at Batterys Plus and some soldering and you're golden. A third option, if you have a variable-output power supply, an digital multimeter, and a resistor, is to trickle-charge the dead lead-acid over many days, feeding it just a few mamps. As lead-acid batteries sit with no charge, the electrodes get coated with a sulphur compound, and attempts to charge normally will just heat up the battery and do nothing for you. If you can regulate the charging current to just barely push some current into the thing, the sulphur will slowly go back into solution, and you can recover some portion of the battery capacity. You have to gradually turn up the charging current over say a week as as the battery charges up it pushes back a little more each time, but always keep the actual current going into it pretty low. I've tried this with 2 batteries, had moderate success with one, it didn't help the other. There are instructions for this on the web somewhere, I think if you check lowendmac.com for the pb100 resource page (the one with the .nl host) there's a link to it from the pb100 resource page. It helps if you have an electronics person help you set up the circuit if you don't recall your physics class from 20 yrs ago well or you blow fuses on the power supply or multimeter :) but nothing horrid should happen (as long as your fuses work!) My recommendation would be to beg, borrow, or steal one of the Lind packs if you can find one. The only thing better than 4 hrs of battery life on a pb100 would be a Newton Messagepad with 24 hrs :) HTH. Brian -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
