Battery dies without warning

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
New behavior on my 1 gig ti book.....shows 89% or show capacity...then next thing you know....it goes directly to sleep without warning......I plug it back in and the battery reads 0 %.



Are there suggestions to fix this? I have tired conditioning the battery where I fully charge, fully drain and repeat ad nauseum.



Any plists or prefs I should delete?





Thanks for any help (other than....its time for a new battery



Greg

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    This should tell you for sure if it's time for a new battery.
  • Reply 2 of 16
    open terminal and type "ioreg -l -w0 | grep Capacity" without quotes. Copy it because it is hard to tell what is what. the first line is an L and the second is a pipe.



    what is the result
  • Reply 3 of 16
    most likely your battery's capacity is no longer... good.



    happened to my last battery, I get to 75% and all of a sudden my laptop goes to sleep.



    Happens because you don't often run the battery all the way down to nill once a month, so the battery never calibrates again. Assuming you always just plug it back in whenever have a chance the battery's capacity slowly goes down through time, but since you never run it down to nothing to calibrate it the battery just remembers the old calibration.



    As time goes on, the differences between what the real battery's capacity and what the battery thinks is the real capacity becomes greater and greater until you get what your getting now...



    hehe, my really bad theory of what happened.



    I recommend you try this app out to find out the condition of your battery:

    coconut battery

    It will tell you what your original battery's capacity was and what your battery's capacity truly is now.
  • Reply 4 of 16
    do you have any friedns with the same computer. I know when i was having battery trouble i borrowed my brother's battery to make sure it wasn't my computer. I am glad that it was the battery
  • Reply 5 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jwink3101

    open terminal and type "ioreg -l -w0 | grep Capacity" without quotes. Copy it because it is hard to tell what is what. the first line is an L and the second is a pipe.



    what is the result




    "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=3430,"Amperage"=1100,"Cycle Count"=229,"Current"=914,"Voltage"=16567,"Flags"=1 090519047,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200})

    | | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=3430,"Amperage"=1100,"Cycle Count"=229,"Current"=914,"Voltage"=16567,"Flags"=1 090519047,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200})



    Is what I get back





    Thanks for the help.....



    Greg
  • Reply 6 of 16
    It says capacity is 81% of the original. Age of battery is 34 months, 229 load cycles.



    Thanks for the help....so do I need a new one?



    Greg



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ichiban_jay

    most likely your battery's capacity is no longer... good.



    happened to my last battery, I get to 75% and all of a sudden my laptop goes to sleep.



    Happens because you don't often run the battery all the way down to nill once a month, so the battery never calibrates again. Assuming you always just plug it back in whenever have a chance the battery's capacity slowly goes down through time, but since you never run it down to nothing to calibrate it the battery just remembers the old calibration.



    As time goes on, the differences between what the real battery's capacity and what the battery thinks is the real capacity becomes greater and greater until you get what your getting now...



    hehe, my really bad theory of what happened.



    I recommend you try this app out to find out the condition of your battery:

    coconut battery

    It will tell you what your original battery's capacity was and what your battery's capacity truly is now.




  • Reply 7 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by gregincolumbus

    It says capacity is 81% of the original. Age of battery is 34 months, 229 load cycles.



    Thanks for the help....so do I need a new one?



    Greg




    It sounds like you are overdue for a new one. The loadcycles are high but not unrealistic but i can;t believe how long you've had it. I got mine replaced in a year. I had 12 months but i had 250+ cycles (which is a lot, especially for one year).



    It would be nice to keep the battery but it doesn't owe you anything
  • Reply 8 of 16
    it says you still have 81% of your original capacity...



    Btw, how long does the laptop last before it does the sleep thing? Perhaps a PMU reset would do the trick.



    Correct me if I'm wrong but resetting the PMU also resets the % charge calibration correct?
  • Reply 9 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ichiban_jay

    it says you still have 81% of your original capacity...



    Btw, how long does the laptop last before it does the sleep thing? Perhaps a PMU reset would do the trick.



    Correct me if I'm wrong but resetting the PMU also resets the % charge calibration correct?




    I have tried the pmu reset...didn't help...the battery lasts around 20 mins before the sudden death without warning.



    Greg
  • Reply 10 of 16
    Like i said above, it doesn;t seem to owe you anything. Replace it
  • Reply 11 of 16
    pubguypubguy Posts: 108member
    Yeah, well, I've got rev 1 of the Titantium Powerbook G4-400 still running on the original battery (last about an hour and a half in a "normal" power setting mode).



    Cycles 256, Months 56, capacity = 56%



    I was having the same problems and Let mine run down 3 times (in other words, fully charge it till the indication is 100% and run it down until the display blanks). After doing that, I finally got the dialog back at the 10 minute mark informing me when the battery would die....and it was accurate again!
  • Reply 12 of 16
    I have a Tibook 867, about 2 years old. The battery won't charge and I suspect it's dead. Here's what cappacity meter says:



    Capacity 4153/4600

    Battery status: excellent 90%

    Amperage 1200

    Currrent: 0

    Voltage 16254

    Current Battery Charge: 0%





    I tried copying that stuff in the terminal, however its incomplete?



    "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Voltage"=16254,"Flags"=1090519429,"Amperage"=12 00,"Capacity"=4153,"Current"=0})



    What does all this mean?
  • Reply 13 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kung Fu Guy

    I have a Tibook 867, about 2 years old. The battery won't charge and I suspect it's dead. Here's what cappacity meter says:



    Capacity 4153/4600

    Battery status: excellent 90%

    Amperage 1200

    Currrent: 0

    Voltage 16254

    Current Battery Charge: 0%





    I tried copying that stuff in the terminal, however its incomplete?



    "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Voltage"=16254,"Flags"=1090519429,"Amperage"=12 00,"Capacity"=4153,"Current"=0})



    What does all this mean?








    IIRC, the terminal command i gave only gives complete infor with the latest panther and tiger. I no longer use it b/c in Tiger, it is in the System Profiler but it is good to give out if you are unsure of the OS
  • Reply 14 of 16
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jwink3101

    It sounds like you are overdue for a new one. The loadcycles are high but not unrealistic but i can;t believe how long you've had it. I got mine replaced in a year. I had 12 months but i had 250+ cycles (which is a lot, especially for one year).



    It would be nice to keep the battery but it doesn't owe you anything




    I've had my Ti-Book 1GHz since December 02, and the battery is still going [fairly] strong. 3+ hrs per charge. I guess the difference is that I've designed a few LiIon battery chargers in my time, and know how to pamper batteries.



    With that said, the cell spec is often 10% degradation after 500 cycles. What this means is that almost no-one designs the chargers very well. LiIon batteries are fragile, and a non-optimal charge or discharge pattern can ruin them forever. In other words, there's a fine line between letting them run too long and letting them run not long enough. Hopefully, as they are expected to, the upcoming LiS cells will remedy a lot of these annoyances.
  • Reply 15 of 16
    so, what is the optimal usage time for a li-ion battery? It would be wonderful to know so I can prolong the life of my battery.
  • Reply 16 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ichiban_jay

    so, what is the optimal usage time for a li-ion battery? It would be wonderful to know so I can prolong the life of my battery.



    It depends a lot on the particular cell, the current draw per cell, etc. Generally speaking, you do not ever want the cell voltage of any cell in your system to get below 3.0V. You also want to discharge past 3.3V. The powerbook has many cells in its battery pack, so it gets a little more complicated, but the nominal voltage of LiIon cells is usually rated at 3.7V, sometimes 3.6V. based on the thickness of the pack, the rated mAh, and the rated voltage, it's possible to be fairly certain about the cell configuration inside the pack.
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