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PowerBook battery capacity wrong
Posted by: mitchW on 2024-09-30 16:57:31
Any possible way to fix this issue with my PowerBook G4 battery?

It holds charge, but the capacity is reported wrong, therefore the gauge percentage is not correct.
I tried charging and discharging it few times with no improvement.

Thanks!
Posted by: Nixontheknight on 2024-09-30 17:05:33
if the capacity is reported wrong, then the battery's cooked. Solution is to either replace the cells of the battery, which are just 18650s, or buy a new battery if soldering batteries scares you
Posted by: 3lectr1cPPC on 2024-09-30 17:31:57
That’s gonna be a BMS fault and won’t be fixed with new cells. My iBook G3 12” and G4 Titanium batteries have the same problem.
Posted by: mitchW on 2024-09-30 18:21:39
I am sure there is a way to reset the BMS, but probably needs some special software or even hardware.
Having such a large value, I think the BMS probably has encountered integer overflow so its capacity has "rolled over".
Value of 65483 (mAh) is very close to 65536 which is 2^16.

There was a battery firmware update for some PowerBook G4 batteries, which someone could have a peek inside and find a way to reprogram the BMS. I am sure there are lots of people with same problem - I own 5 G4 PowerBooks, and two of them have the same issue.

The battery holds its charge fine, lasts for about 2 hours... so I doubt it is a problem with cells.
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