Re: PB charger stops working

In article <yzlr6z0qqyu.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
cstacy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:

John Johnson <null@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

In article <yzlr6z0k6fe.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
cstacy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:

I leave my G4 PB 17" plugged in most of the time most days.
Sometimes I notice (usually from the "low battery" warning) that it
had not only stopped charging, but stopped using AC power altogether!
The (previously green) light in the connector is turned off, and I've
unknowingly been on battery for a while. Plugging and unplugging does
nothing. Resetting the external module (by unplugging from the wall,
or just disconnecting the block-end connector) works and it goes back
into orange charging mode (the battery having been drained by this point).
This didn't happen for the first 7 months of the machine's life.
Now it happens about once or twice a week.

I have not noticed any battery problems; I run on battery when in
meetings and travel several days of the week. Battery life seems
almost as good as the day I bought the machine 9 months ago.

There is some flakiness with the PB - from Day 1 - where it will
randomly freeze up or hardware panic. Sometimes the clock is
ticking but keyboard and mouse stopped working, and sometimes
system is dead or panic reboots. Nobody has ever been able to
diagnose this. Happens about every other week, sometimes a
few times in a row, then returns to normal. Doesn't seem to
be heat related or program related or anything obvious.
When freezing, must use POWER button. No logs or anything.
Mentioning it here just because it's the only other thing
that's wrong with the machine.

(I thought Apple hardware was more reliable than this. Oh, well...)

Maybe the external power supply gets hot from being plugged
in all the time and just shuts off or something?

It shouldn't.

Is the machine still under warrantee? Whether or not anyone has been
able to diagnose the issue, it's not correct behavior and should be
dealt with. Unless you've added aftermarket RAM (in which case, that's
the first suspect), it's almost certainly the result of a component that
Apple would cover under warrantee.

It's not a reproducible problem, so they say there's nothing wrong.

Well, presumably, the ticking clock/keyboard/mouse freeze can be brought
in while frozen. It's not necessarily reproducible, but there's clearly
a problem there. Depending on what applications you run, and what
hardware you've added/changed, it's easier or harder to isolate, but a
methodical approach will probably isolate it to some hardware component
or other. You wouldn't even have to do all the work yourself, so long as
you can rule out software interactions (which may not be trivial, but
there you are).

Again, swapping RAM is probably the first thing to try, since RAM
problems are often difficult to reproduce, can give symptoms similar to
yours, and cannot be reliably detected by common scanning software. I've
heard of the occasional machine that has bad RAM from Apple, but that's
not very common at all. Bad/finicky RAM from 3rd-party vendors is much
more common, particularly if you don't buy the (often rather more
expensive) RAM sold particularly for Apple computers. Apple's hardware
is known to be intolerant of RAM that doesn't _quite_ match the specs,
even if it works fine in other machines (even other Macs!).

Providing us a list of 3rd-party software/hardware might also be
worthwhile, since it's possible that someone else has had a software
interaction.

As for the charger issue, yeah. Since it goes away when you unplug it
you're in a pretty tough spot there. I honestly don't know what to tell
you, other than "that's not normal." Have you tried swapping to a
different AC adapter? I doubt the problem is tied to the brick, but it's
easy to check if someone else you know uses a similar-enough machine.

Or see if you can convince the boss to let you work from the Apple store
for a week so that when it happens you can simply call the service tech
over. ;-)

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

--
Later,
John

johajohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.
.

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