Home » forums » Hacking » Hardware Hacks

Pismo batteries

Submitted by pjschmitt on June 5, 2008 - 10:33am. Hardware Hacks

I have a Pismo with a dead battery. It contains 9 dead lithium cells. I want to replace them with some that are 2000mAh or up to 2400mAh but have not found any good sources for them with tabs, or any definitive diy that includes info about resetting the battery after it is done so it will charge to its full potential. Peter

» login or register to post comments | previous forum topic | next forum topic

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
iamdigitalman's picture

Open Firmware

Submitted by iamdigitalman on June 5, 2008 - 10:45am.

I found this on another messageboard. My battery in my pismo (original) was getting a good 2 hours, but then it mysteriously dropped to 15 minutes and it would not charge past the blinking light. I tried this method once, and it worked. I can now get an hour or so out of the battery, maybe more if I did it again. What is weird is when it charges, it goes from one blinking to a full 4, non in between.

Anyways, try this before you replace the cells:

Quote:

OK this is how to do a reset of the Pismo and I guess the Lombard Batteries...



1. Make sure the battery is as charged as it will go and keep the power in.



2. Boot into Open Firmware (Command-Option-O-F at Boot)



3. Unplug the power.



4. Run these commands.

reset nvram

set defaults

reset all



5. Boot into Open Firmware (Do not let it boot into the OS at any time or you will have to start at step 1 again.)



6. Leave it to drain the battery.



7. Once the battery is drained, insert the power and quickly boot into open firmware and repeat step 3-6.



8. Plug in the power again, boot into OF and leave to charge.



9. Once fully charged (will take about 3 hours) repeat steps  4-6 again. (There should be a good difference in run time)



10. Leave to charge while turned off.



11. Boot into OF and run the commands in step 4.



12. Let it boot into OS X.



13. Turn off all powersave functions and let it drain till it sleeps.

» iamdigitalman's Cleaning House Sale

login or register to post comments

Hardware assistance please.

Submitted by pjschmitt on June 5, 2008 - 10:57am.

Thanks for your software input. I bought this Pismo off of eBay and the guy told me it had dead batteries from like 2003. So I went ahead and bought a new one and want to replace the cells in this dead one with 18650 2000-2400 mAh cells to get much more run time from it.

Thanks.

» Fixing old Macs is cool.

login or register to post comments