Yes, that’s the major annoyance. There are system extensions to take care of the most exasperating side effect (the clock always resetting to 1904), so fixing it isn’t super critical, but it’s one of those little nagging annoyances that is hard to completely ignore, you know? (I never did get around to writing my cheating cheater’s system extension that would copy everything in PRAM to a file on disk prior to shutdown, then restore that little file to the freshly blanked PRAM at boot time. Couple that little trick with an NTP client, of which I have found at least one that still works, and almost everything is good even without a PRAM battery. Outside of those unfortunate few models that can’t actually power up without working PRAM power, the only reason you really need your PRAM is if your boot disk is accessed in an unusual way and your Mac can’t actually find it without that nonvolatile hint.)
Plus, of course, fixing the backup battery’s lack of charge seems likely to involve suddenly having main batteries for the thing for the first time in my possession of it. I hate working on a laptop with no batteries at all; the slightest interruption to the power supply (tree falls on the power lines three blocks away and makes the grid flicker, cat sleeping on the power cord Because It’s Warm causes it to unexpectedly be pulled free of the laptop, etc.) causes you to lose everything, and under classic Mac OS you end up having to reinstall the system software sooner rather than later because it seems to have about a 50% chance of getting corrupted in some way whenever the machine is not shut down properly.
I have located the Lind Battery Utilities together with instructions to make them possibly even more effective via blind ResEdit tomfoolery (see http://seth.mattinen.org/notes.php?id=1),but EMMpathy and the Apple one seem to have vanished from the net (at least, hours of casual Googling haven’t yet revealed a working link to either one). I keep meaning to check the various mirrors that sprang up upon the demise of the former Apple FTP site, but I haven’t had much luck finding any of them, as only the Internet Archive one seems to have a particularly stable URL (mind you, I haven’t put much effort into that particular search yet, either).
All of that said, these batteries are apparently considered discharged by the power management software when the voltage across their output terminals drops to around 10 V. These ones are both registering around 0.1 V — two full orders of magnitude smaller, and at the very limit of what my cheap analogue multimeter can even register. I have to say I am not especially optimistic about their chances of imminent revival. Fortunately, they are apparently quite straightforward to recell, providing you find some way to glue the plastic shell back together afterwards.
Plus, of course, fixing the backup battery’s lack of charge seems likely to involve suddenly having main batteries for the thing for the first time in my possession of it. I hate working on a laptop with no batteries at all; the slightest interruption to the power supply (tree falls on the power lines three blocks away and makes the grid flicker, cat sleeping on the power cord Because It’s Warm causes it to unexpectedly be pulled free of the laptop, etc.) causes you to lose everything, and under classic Mac OS you end up having to reinstall the system software sooner rather than later because it seems to have about a 50% chance of getting corrupted in some way whenever the machine is not shut down properly.
I have located the Lind Battery Utilities together with instructions to make them possibly even more effective via blind ResEdit tomfoolery (see http://seth.mattinen.org/notes.php?id=1),but EMMpathy and the Apple one seem to have vanished from the net (at least, hours of casual Googling haven’t yet revealed a working link to either one). I keep meaning to check the various mirrors that sprang up upon the demise of the former Apple FTP site, but I haven’t had much luck finding any of them, as only the Internet Archive one seems to have a particularly stable URL (mind you, I haven’t put much effort into that particular search yet, either).
All of that said, these batteries are apparently considered discharged by the power management software when the voltage across their output terminals drops to around 10 V. These ones are both registering around 0.1 V — two full orders of magnitude smaller, and at the very limit of what my cheap analogue multimeter can even register. I have to say I am not especially optimistic about their chances of imminent revival. Fortunately, they are apparently quite straightforward to recell, providing you find some way to glue the plastic shell back together afterwards.