The only good part of the pending demise of my powerbook is that the “genius” at the Apple store found the diagnosis both facinating and obviously entertaining. It took us both a long time to figure out the following. When I came in the machine wouldn’t boot, and the battery was dead.

My battery only charges when the machine is asleep or turned off. When running the power from the adaptor is insufficent to run the machine. The battery slowly discharges when the machine is running. If the battery fully discharges; which happens if I don’t keep an eye on it, then it is impossible to start it. If fully discharged it doesn’t charge. At that point I need to find another machine of the same kind and recharge the battery on that machine.

The charging subsystem is on the main logic board; so that needs replacing. Since my case has a small dent Apple insists that both are fixed. Total cost of repair is the cost of both the case and th logic board, i.e. around $900. Machine’s is about two and half years old.

Looks like I’ll be buying a new machine and then disassembling this one and selling it’s organs one part at a time on eBay (except of course the failed main logic board).

I didn’t really want to be this kind of spending money at this instant, but I am grateful for firewire.