Your experience with Ebay Mac Book Batteries

[tron9000]

I'm repairing a MacBook A1260 I found in the WEEE bin at work - it had a very poorly battery, where one of the LiPo cells had expanded out of the casing! Amongst other things it had no charger and the hard drive was removed (as protocol). I have just installed a spare hard-drive I had, so now need power.

I've found a lot of cheap replacement battery packs on ebay: 6Cell Battery A1175 for Apple MacBook Pro 15" A1260 2008 Early Mac Pro 15

It says it has a 3 year warranty - I hardly believe that for the price! But I wondered if anyone had done this repair and if they had a good or bad experience with these cheapo battery packs?

Thanks

[RGB255_0_0]

Should be fine for what you'll probably do with it. Official batteries will cost more than that thing is worth.

In fact I'd probably not even bother with getting a battery and use it direct off the charger.

[tron9000]

well I won't mind it being a bit portable and wireless and given its a mag-lock connection charger, the likely-hood of accidentally knocking the power off is high, without performing some unsightly mods.

So battery power is required

[RGB255_0_0]

Well as long as you're aware that that Mac is essentially end of life and Chrome and Apple no longer offer support to non-C2D Macs (those which can't be upgraded to El-Capitan) and I believe Firefox will/has ended support too.

At best it's wise to run Windows or Linux on it and it's not worth spending a whole lot on it. Though there are people blinkered by stupidity when there's an Apple logo on something.

Anyways, decent enough find and still somewhat useful!

[tron9000]

ah duly noted, not being a Mac fanboy I didn't know that. Cheers

[wraper]

It says it has a 3 year warranty

If you contact them after a few months, they just won't reply. However paypal gives 6 months protection. The issue with those batteries is that often they are selling crap with used cells salvaged from scrap. Or just used batteries with reset controller, YMMV.

[tron9000]

Yeh I would expect such service. cheers

[Rasz]

STOP
RIGHT
THERE

1260 = GeForce 8600M = it is already broken, you are wasting your money

[tron9000]

STOP
RIGHT
THERE

1260 = GeForce 8600M = it is already broken, you are wasting your money

care to elaborate?

[un4tural]

probably something apple repair people know about em, like the more recent macs where the nvidia graphics would fail all the time and they refused to acknowledge it until way way way way late. usual apple stuff.

but if it doesn't start off the charger without a battery, don't waste money on the battery. could also hot wire a spare battery off another laptop too, unless apple has some proprietary chip there to give OK that battery is theirs.

unless it's for scrap, i wouldn't trust ebay batteries, most likely protection circuit wont be up to scratch either among the other issues mentioned above. Don't know exactly what they use but if there isn't some proprietary handshake, which there might well be, you can simply hotwire a battery off something else just to make sure it charges and runs off it.

more importantly don't sink money if you're not sure it turns on or charges/runs off battery if you can help it...

[kripton2035]

some years ago I bought 5 batteries for another model of mac but really cheap around 35 euros
I returned all of them for refund they were all not working
not working at all, no charge, or a ridiculous 20 mins autonomy
in the end I found a real apple one for 110 euros and it still works ...

BTW Rasz is right these macbooks have a known graphic card defect, and it cannot be cured unless you change the bga nvidia chip you cannot find anymore ...

it should run without battery, just use a 85W charger (it should be 24v ac) if you use a 60W charger it will not start without a battery

[Rasz]

STOP
RIGHT
THERE

1260 = GeForce 8600M = it is already broken, you are wasting your money

care to elaborate?

its a TARP
even quick google for a1260 returns this video on the first page 



throw it on ebay/gumtree, there is always some apple sucker willing to pay $100 for a corpse/garbage with right logo. Put that money towards nice used T420 x220 8440p 840 6470p etc, basically business line laptop, they are build to last, and are ~$200

[MrSlack]

+1 for not fixing it. A1260's are a pile of shit. The woman who runs my local coffee shop found out I was "a computer guy" and now I fix hers in exchange for lifetime free coffee.

so I get told it won't charge and it smells funny.

Turns out the left IO board had basically caught fire.

More gore here: http://imgur.com/a/yvLaw

[helius]

I've read reports of burning circuit boards in Mac laptops for several years and still wonder what is likely to cause that. There is only low voltage present so it's not likely to be tracking. Some kind of electrolysis?

[MrSlack]

I've read reports of burning circuit boards in Mac laptops for several years and still wonder what is likely to cause that. There is only low voltage present so it's not likely to be tracking. Some kind of electrolysis?

High current, crap connectors. Magsafe is usually what I see going woosh. The connectors are really bad as the pins don't have a high contact surface and get full of crap. After a period of time this results in lots of current being pushed through a small contact point which results in heat which buggers the connectors and causes them to deform. Then one day you get a short either on the board or the cable and poof goes your MBP.

[tron9000]

well I'll gut the RAM out of it and maybe pull the LCD out of it to use the backlight for something - cheers guys

[senso]

I've read reports of burning circuit boards in Mac laptops for several years and still wonder what is likely to cause that. There is only low voltage present so it's not likely to be tracking. Some kind of electrolysis?

High current, crap connectors. Magsafe is usually what I see going woosh. The connectors are really bad as the pins don't have a high contact surface and get full of crap. After a period of time this results in lots of current being pushed through a small contact point which results in heat which buggers the connectors and causes them to deform. Then one day you get a short either on the board or the cable and poof goes your MBP.

That one in your photos also got a nice dose of humidity going by all the cooper residues on the plastic cover..

[MrSlack]

Indeed. In a steamy coffee shop.

[Rasz]

well I'll gut the RAM out of it and maybe pull the LCD out of it to use the backlight for something - cheers guys

why bother when you can get ebay sucker pay you $100 for this corpse?

[MrSlack]

+1 for ebay suckers. Keep me well fed

[tron9000]

oooohhh, you guys are evil!

 

[Rasz]

not evil, One man's trash is another man's treasure ;-)
not sure what its good for other than a decorative piece from lcd lid apple logo tho

[bitseeker]

not sure what its good for

Spare parts to keep some other A1260 going (like MrSlack's coffee supplier ).