Table of Contents

PowerBook G3 Pismo

CPU: PowerPC G3 500 Mhz L2 1MB
RAM: 512MB
VGA: 8MB ATI Rage M3 1024x768 TFT LCD Panel
Audio: Yes
HDD: 128GB SSD PATA
CD-ROM: Yes
Floppy: No
Touchpad type: Trackpad 
Lan: Yes
Wifi: None
USB Ports: 2x v1.1
irDA: Yes
DC: 20V 4.5A (self made replacement)
Battery: Yes, rebuilt, now testing situation, but seems like it holds the charge
OS: Mac OS 9.2

History

CMOS (BIOS) Battery

Battery refurbishing

Needed stuff

Original

Refurbished

Don't lough too much, it's my first refurbishment :D

Battery rebuilt

Pismo's battery uses standard 18650 cells, it's easy to find and it's cheap. You can even find some used or removed from not used batteries, they can be easily found on ebay. Most of them are sold in batches, like 10 or more of them. You have to remove old battery case, remove the old cells, solder or spot weld the new cells and place them inside. I've done it and Powerbook does not recongize the rebuilt battery. One green light on the battery blinks all the time, i have tried various things and it didn't worked. Found article that it needs to reset nvram and reset default values by booting to open firmware (holding Command + Option + O + F on boot)

reset-nvram
set-defaults

reset-all

It didn't helped, the battery icon on macos 9 the menu bar was showing that the battery is empty. I think i needed to insert fully discharged cells, instead i was using fully charged cells. The controller of the battery have memory which says that the last state of the battery is discharged, but the cells are actually charged. It was misunderstood by the system. I was able to solve it by using BatteryAmnesia application, started it and started to discharged, it showed 0% at the start of discharging but laptop keeped alive for over 300minutes and showed that it actually holding the charge. Without this app, the laptop sleeps almost instantly when the charger is unplugged. So it solved my main big issue, after the discharge it turned off. I've inserted the power charger and left the laptop to fully charge (i didn't turn it on), the battery led indicators started to increase, 1 for first 30min and other came later, some time later full 4 leds where lighted and it indicated that the battery is fully charged, i kept waiting until the all leds where off, it mean that the charge is fully complete. Now I've turned the laptop on and it showed that the battery is full. The MyBattery application can show more details, such as how much time where left depending on the battery charge. It showed 4:11 (four hours and eleven minutes)!!! Thats fantastic! I'm attaching some screens of the work that have been done. I've used 22xx mAh 18650 battery cells higher was 2295 and lower was 2195 but all 9 cells where in that range.