Resuscitate Dead iBook Battery
I just took delivery of a brand-spanking-old iBook G3/600 that I got off eBay for a reporter here at the JFP. (All he needs is word processing and e-mail in a portable package, so a $250 laptop works nicely.) I started to fear that I’d gotten a dud, though, thanks to the fact that the battery wouldn’t charge, even after resetting PRAM and the Power Manager. Fortunately, I hit on this article: macosxhints.com – A new way to resuscitate a dead battery, which walks you through a reset in Open Firmware. (I’d seen the technique in the past, but had forgotten about it. Thanks to Google, I barely need a brain anymore.)
He booted the iBook into Open Firmware by pressing Cmd-Opt-O-F at startup. He then typed reset-nvram, hit the Return key, and then typed reset-all. When his laptop restarted, the “battery was recognized and recognized and recharged perfectly. Subsequent readers confirmed that the technique revived batteries they too had given up for dead.”
Confirmed…it works!


