[carrillator]

hi, i just bought an used g3 ibook, this is my first time as a mac user, so i don't know what to do when i have a problem or where to find out the solution, so please help me if you know what could be the problem.
i charge the battery in the ibook, after a while the ac plug turns green showing a full charge, i click the button in the battery and it shows 4-LED lights, then after i unplug the cord i use it only like 10 or 20 minutes and the ibook goes into sleep mode, and it won't turn on until i plug the AC, then the battery has 2 % charge, and 10 or 20 minutes before it was a 100%so is this really a fried battery? or a system error? please help me with this issue, i heard about booting oper firmware and type reset-nvram and reset-all but i'm not so sure about this, and because i'm an unexperienced mac user, i don't know how to fix any problem that could come out after doing that, so any suggestions? is that method safe? thank you for your time

[VegasACF]

Sounds like you've got a battery whose life is close to ending. You can likely obtain a new Apple battery from Apple or you can probably find a third party battery that will have a longer life from a variety of vendors.

Go to Google and enter "iBook G3 battery". And for more refined searching enter the word "replacement" after the above search terms.

[carrillator]

but the battery wouldn't light up the 4 LEDs would it? and i also want to know if then the mac os X has a bug detecting the battery charge, because it marks 90 % sometimes even more and it suddenly turns off. thank you for your answer vegas

[VegasACF]

Originally Posted by carrillator

thank you for your answer vegas

Me pleasure.

The battery is holding as complete a charge as it can. It's either just not able to hold much of a charge any more (but still "thinks" of itself as full), or is allowing it to discharge it too fast. Odds are that it's the former, not the latter.

Either way, the OS is only interpreting the data the battery gives it. Since the battery thinks it's full the OS takes its word for it.

A new battery should fix things. If it doesn't then there is something seriously wrong with the PMU (Power Management Unit).

You might try resetting the PMU by following the instructions appropriate for your particular iBook. You can find them here. It's not going to hurt anything to give it a try.

[carrillator]

hey, I just resetted the PMU, and guess what, it took my ibook back to 1969 (lol , that was the new date after the reset) and then i turned on the ibook, it's been more than 1 hour and a half and it's still running, i'm truly amazed that it worked, i was ready to buy a new one, but it seems like this is gonna last for a little longer, at least i hope so, i guess we'll have to wait and see how long does this new life lasts, thank you for your advise.

[VegasACF]

Glad to hear it. 1969 seems to be the new default starting date for Macs. It used to be 1904.

I hope you get at least your money's worth of battery life out of it. But whenever it does give up the ghost (and it will) just get a replacement battery (or two) and you're all set.