Hello All: This is in two parts (A and B) in order to fit on the list.
This is the battery help that I promised earlier, sorry about being late. This bounced once already. The URL will be at the end along with the battery take apart. Please read the _entire_ help article first as I did not take the time to organize everything exactly as it should be. Please email me directly for comments, corrections, or other improvements. You should be good with your hands and have some electrical knowledge before attempting any of this. Please be careful as it all requires a steady hand and good concentration. If, after having read the entire article, you are not absolutely certain that you can do everything mentioned and understand every part of this article and its inherent dangers and possible causes of damage and can protect yourself from such, please don't do this. I cannot be held accountable for any injury, damage, or loss that following this help may cause because I am not holding myself up as an expert in any field. This is merely a recounting of others and my own experience and knowledge and using my own abilities in the hopes that this may help someone in some way. First: A nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride (I don't know about lithium batteries yet) can often be revived even though its charge has fallen to as low as 150 millivolts. To do this, it helps a great amount if you have a voltmeter or multimeter and you must have a normal battery charger (or be able to make one) of around 150 milliamps to 1 amp and 7 to 17 volts. Second: From my experience, 500 series PowerBook batteries (they have 8 NiMH cells in series of 1800 mah and 1.2V minimum _each_) require at least 4.5 volts for the battery microprocessor to communicate with the notebook charging system. If you take a 500 series battery that only shows 150 milliamps on your voltmeter and the battery will accept a charge from your common battery charger (usually evident after checking for a few seconds with the voltmeter), if the battery will rise to 4.5 to 5 volts, then the battery can be checked by Apple's Intelligent Battery Recondition, VST's EMMpathy, or Linds' iBUS (BU500 Deluxe) and possibly brought to a working charge. Sometimes, the battery will not accept a charge and stay at about 100-300 millivolts, even after 24 hours of charging. The battery is then absolutely dead, that is, all the cells are dead and the battery is a candidate for opening and replacing the cells (All notebook batteries are simply "packs" of normal batteries cells -A, AA, AAA, C, D, 4/5 C, 4/5 D, etc.- (NiCad or NiMH) arranged to give the voltage and amperage necessary to run the notebook. The PB 500 batteries are always connected in series (one after the other). Sometimes the (500) battery will accept some charge in between 1.2 and 10.6 volts. This is because each cell in the "pack" can accept between about 1.2 and 1.4 volts and some of the cells are shorted, or dead, and only the good cells are showing their voltage (e.g. 5 x 1.2 = 6 volts). This pack can be opened and either the bad cells replaced (they can be found using the multimeter, bad cells will have 0 volts and they have 0 ohms resistance, a good cell will have a charge and have _essentially_ infinite resistance) or all the cells replaced. I have done both with good results. -- 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
