Pismo battery depletes fast during sleep

In article bobball-058ED7.09553403122003@redacted.invalid, Bob Ball bobball@redacted.invalid wrote:

Sometime in the middle of updating to 10.2.8 and then to Panther, my Pismo battery began running down very rapidly during sleep. [...] and it won't keep the computer going for more than an hour nowadays.

You might want to recondition your battery. The way to do this is to use your computer on the battery until it forcably puts itself to sleep due to low power. (Ignore the warnings that power is low, just keep it on until it gives up on you.) Then plug it in and charge it to full capacity without interruption.

Note -- Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.portables Thomas Reed wrote:

Bob Ball wrote:

Sometime in the middle of updating to 10.2.8 and then to Panther, my Pismo battery began running down very rapidly during sleep. [...] and it won't keep the computer going for more than an hour nowadays.

You might want to recondition your battery. The way to do this is to use your computer on the battery until it forcably puts itself to sleep due to low power. (Ignore the warnings that power is low, just keep it on until it gives up on you.) Then plug it in and charge it to full capacity without interruption.

And I suggest you do it under no load ...

1. Your battery may discharge linearly to 80%, and then drop into coma. You plug it in and it charges linearly to 20%, and then jumps to full. Effectively, your battery's capacity is reduced to 20%. Or some other value. You should calibrate it. But it may keep the above pattern.

What I suggest you do: (Peter's Trickle Calibration)

1. charge fully and then some

2. in terminal, ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n battery -w0 | grep Bat (make a note of your Capacity -- should be around 4000 or more) sudo pmset -b spindown 1 sleep 0 reduce 1 dim 1 (prevents idle-sleep, and after 1 idle minute spins down your disk, reduces your processor speed, and turns off the LCD when on battery) (Maybe in Panther you can do that without pmset, but Jaguar is broken)

3. shut down all applications. turn off airport, disconnect anything external -- keyborad, mouse, printers, and finally, power.

4. LEAVE IT ALONE -- DO NOT TOUCH IT

5. W A I T (5 hours or more ...)

6. eventually your notebook will go to sleep

7. plug it in. wait 3 minutes. (mebbe 5 to be sure :-)

8. ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n battery -w0 | grep Bat (Has it re-evaluated your Capacity?)

9. leave it alone and let it charge fully.

10. if the Capacity changed significantly, you might want to repeat the calibration cycle.

11. Adjust your battery-power management settings to make it sleep at a more reasonable time.

Note -- calibration means helping the battery's firmware estimate the battery's capacity.

I figured out all the above from experiments. Hope it works for you. Please do let me know your results.

If you're curious and want to measure as you go, get my awk program (batmon) or get XBattery.

(But keep in mind that measuring may interfere with the calibration.)

-- Peter Renzland TORONTO @redacted.invalid {)/' (}, @redacted.invalid \@redacted.invalid {)/' www.dancing.org Canada /\ /\_._,(_/ ()_/7 /\_._,(_\ TraditionalSocialDancing. ' \ /_\ /_\ /) /\ /_\ Je danse, donc je suis. . /) /( / )( \ ' ) (

Same here. Since 10.2.8 or 10.3, some stuff (Firewire, USB, maybe Airport and the modem ?) is left on even while the Pismo is asleep and the battery drains quite fast.

As an example, I have an external Firewire drive and before 10.2.8, the light on the drive went off when I put the computer to sleep, but now it stays on.

Mats Weber wrote:

Same here. Since 10.2.8 or 10.3, some stuff (Firewire, USB, maybe Airport and the modem ?) is left on even while the Pismo is asleep and the battery drains quite fast.

As an example, I have an external Firewire drive and before 10.2.8, the light on the drive went off when I put the computer to sleep, but now it stays on.

You could measure it. Use xBattery or my awk script (batmon).

My measurements -- 500Mhz Dual USB iBook, OSX 10.2.8, 384Mb, 10 Gb, Airport: Battery capacity: 3284 mAh (2 years old, rarely used); voltage 10.606-12.411 Charging rate: 0-90%: 750 mA, 95%: 500 mA; ioreg always (?) claims 1200 mA Usage load: sleep: 14 mA; doing nothing: 450 mA; low use: 750 mA; max: 1200 mA Battery time: 10 days; 7.5h; 4h:20m; 2h:45m

-- Peter

In article BAszb.9131$zf2.1191630@redacted.invalid, Peter Renzland phr0206@redacted.invalid wrote:

You could measure it. Use xBattery or my awk script (batmon).

where do I get the script ?

In article bobball-058ED7.09553403122003@redacted.invalid, Bob Ball bobball@redacted.invalid wrote:

Sometime in the middle of updating to 10.2.8 and then to Panther, my Pismo battery began running down very rapidly during sleep. I can't quantify it very well, but it might be depleted overnight where it might have lasted 2-3-4 days. It's the original battery, and it won't keep the computer going for more than an hour nowadays. An Airport card is on whenever the computer is awake. But something seemed to happen in the last few weeks to accelerate depletion. Anyone know what?

As others have noted the Bus remains powered during sleep in 10.2.8 and later. My Pismo and I are back in 10.2.6 and the batter now gets a good night's rest. You seem to have a second problem but if I were you I'd start by heading back to 10.2.6 until Apple makes extra Battery drain optional.