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dbdjre0143

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 11, 2017
361
382
West Virginia
I recently purchased my first G3 Clamshell, and have found it working great, with the exception of the battery. When I plug it in, the charging light does turn to orange, but no matter how long I leave it plugged in, it never gets any charge. I'm not expecting miracles from this battery, but the behavior makes me wonder if there is something I could do to "jump-start" the charging and get a little bit of life from it.
What I've tried:
  1. Reset button
  2. Resetting PRAM
  3. Using reset-nvram, set-defaults, and reset-all in OpenFirmware
None of the above changed the behavior. Does anyone else have any tricks I could try to help rejuvenate it?
 

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,834
3,508
I wouldn't read too much into the orange light. Been there many times with dead batteries.
 

TimothyL

macrumors 6502
May 4, 2019
370
264
As of now, the Clamshell batteries are still available for $100 online. There is some company out there still making them
 

ScreenSavers

macrumors 68020
Feb 26, 2016
2,115
1,688
Bloomingdale, GA
I wouldn't expect it to ever work. I've personally dealt with dozens of clamshells in the last year or two and only seen maybe two good batteries, and neither was original. 20+ year old batteries are unlikely to work, an iBook clamshell batteries were never meant to last that long in the first place.
 

Slix

macrumors 65816
Mar 24, 2010
1,432
1,966
As of now, the Clamshell batteries are still available for $100 online. There is some company out there still making them
Can you share a link to this please? My Clamshell battery has been dead since I got it, but I could never find a replacement anywhere. $100 is steep though.
 
As of now, the Clamshell batteries are still available for $100 online. There is some company out there still making them

The vendor on places like eBay which sell that battery is not a battery I would recommend.

The one I bought from them, new, in March 2018, lost one 18650 cell at a time, beginning with late June that year, then two more in July, and finally all of them by September (I covered this in a rare review for the product on eBay). I also made that purchase just before the prices skyrocketed to what they are now.

I have eight new 18650 cells and an old battery shell, but I haven't managed yet to do the “8-Bit Guy” method successfully.
 
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