Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion on lead-acid batteries. I seem to have gotten lucky with my new Portable. After two days of charging at 300 mA, the Portable fires right up, and loads System 7.5 from the 40 meg internal HD. The system also has the Apple 3 MB RAM expansion installed, for a total of 4 MB RAM. No backlighting, though. The only side effect of being long-dead seems to be a fairly fast drain on the battery when the system is off and not plugged in to the adapter; I'll have to experiment to see if this is due to the system going into sleep mode rather than powering down completely, or whether the battery isn't holding it's charge. I'm still hunting for a Portable AC adapter and/or replacement battery locally; if I can't find one, I may contact one of the list members who indicated they may have one for sale or trade. Thanks to all. Regards, Mark Gregory