Until about a couple weeks ago, my Mac (2015 13-inch model) was working fine, if not a little slow. Then one day the trackpad decided to give up on life and would not respond to anything I did. I looked up a few fixes and used them all, and after enough attempts, it started working again. But after that, it kept breaking. Resetting the PRAM seems to be what works the best, but it doesn’t always work. The keyboard has even broken a couple of times, and I had trouble restarting it because it wouldn’t register that I had the power button pressed. This morning, none of the usual fixes worked. I played the ancient startup noise at least 10 times and nothing happened. It didn’t even seem to register that I was trying to reset the PRAM when I pressed command+option+R+P, which usually fixes it. Based on about ten seconds of googling, I think it might be an issue with the PRAM battery, but I’m not sure and I don’t really trust my judgement here. Any help is greatly appreciated.
I can’t find the old PRAM battery on this year and model. But they are known to get wonky when the main battery is defective. Given the age and cost to repair I’d start shopping for a replacement. Refurbs of that year and model look to be just under 300. An iFixit kit is just over 100 for the main battery.
It did great so time to move on.