you know on recent Apple portables (up until the MB and MBP) have a little ring that lights up when the charger is connected, around the power jack. orange if it's charging, and green when it's fully charged. What I want to know, is when was this feature added? I just got a 500mhz iBook, and it's not on there, making it a PITA to look at the bottom for when the battery LEDs light up, or when the OS tells me the battery is charging.

I was thinking of adding this myself, anybody know what I would need, or would it just not be worth it?

-digital

Not worth it, in my opinion. But that would be a cool hack. If it isn't already on the board, then you probably can't add it yourself. On the other hand, some resistors and an LED wired up in parallel to the recharge lines on the battery and routed to some optical plastics around the power port could do what you want... Maybe.

FWIW, the glow ring was on the original 300 MHz clamshell iBooks. Mine's glowing green right now.

Peace,
Drew
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wit, if it was on the original clamshells, then why is it not on my iBook? and when did it come back in to play on the iBooks, as well on the Powerbooks?

I may just try this, because I was always in love with this on the portables at the apple store..

now the macbook and MBPs only have a single LED in the plug of the adapter.

-digital

EDIT: I looked around, and it appears the light ring is ON the power adapter. is that true? because I have a 3rd party adapter that came with mine, and it seems to not make good contact with the machine unless it's twisted a certin way. It also has a ferrite bead a few inches from the connector that goes into the computer. I may have to go find an offical apple 45w brick.

Yeah -- the lights were on the actual power connector, not on the computer.

That little light was actually somewhat annoying at times, between that and the sleep light on my PowerBook G4, I often ended up keeping a magazine on top of the TiBook when I put it to sleep and went to bed.
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If the light is flaky you may have the larger issue of wires inside the power cord fraying or being loose, which may lead to either simply no power, or a short that may destroy the PS, the DC board, or the iBook, or even start a fire. Hope for the best and that it simply stops working. I noticed the same symptom on my iBook 600 power supply a few weeks ago. I'm currently on the lookout on my local Craigslist for a cheap replacement. I've seen used iBook PS go for $20 a couple months ago. I've been regretting the decision not to pick that up as a spare at the time.