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• LEGO Mac Pro houses 2 machines

Posted by: Tam Nguyen on July 25, 2008 at 7:28 AM

At the end of the article, he admits that the cells don't work after 2 years claiming he needs to reset something.

2 years is a reasonable life for cells. My 2004 Powerbook G4 is on it's 3rd battery. I should see if I can find one of the old ones and break it open.

I do also have a Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet) with a dead battery but it has some other major issues (like overheating and crashing after 20 minutes and being too slow to run OSX), so I don't think I'll bother trying to replace the cells.

The cells in question were the Li-ion type of the 18650 variety, which is a very common lithium ion cell (18mm diameter, 650mm length) for laptops and other devices with large packs. There is a size, 14500, which is very similar in size to AA but still it's not called AA, and that wasn't used here.

Don't laptop batteries have counter-measures to prevent changing the batteries yourself?

I've heard of ID circuits that shut down power permanently once they've been disconnected.

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