At 18:58 -0600 1/17/05, Dwight wrote: I second the "bad idea" notation. I have had one (count it) one failure on a heavily used Powerbook 3400 I've had as my primary computer since they first came out (about 6 years, extensive airline travel, etc.) That was when I took a discharged NiMH battery (had been on the shelf for 3-4 years), put it into the machine with the machine plugged in, and ran the battery-cycling program Apple offered for the 5300 and 3400. Battery started to charge (maybe 20 seconds), I pulled wall power (as instructed), machine went down hard with an ugly noise and stayed down until it got a new power supply board. I didn't see the old one, but I'm morally certain the escape of some magic smoke was involved. Since then I've been very very careful to deal with near-dead NiMH batteries using a non-critical piece of hardware, rather than a built-in charger. However, same laptop and same battery are still giving good service (my secondary machine, now) so I guess I second the below as well. -- - Mark 210-522-6025, temporary cell 240-375-2995