I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty; if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop is completely dead.

I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm unlikely to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there might be some firmware or other software change that could account for it.

upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1

  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               Dell
  serial:               11
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sat 18 Jul 2020 12:34:19 BST (39 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               charging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              0 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         37.81 Wh
    energy-full-design:  48.84 Wh
    energy-rate:         0 W
    voltage:             9.306 V
    percentage:          0%
    capacity:            77.4161%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-caution-charging-symbolic'

/var/log/messages says:

Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   21.858825] iTCO_vendor_support: vendor-support=0 Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   21.868799] iTCO_wdt: Intel TCO WatchDog Timer Driver v1.11 Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   21.869780] iTCO_wdt: Found a ICH9M TCO device (Version=2, TCOBASE=0x0460) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   21.869983] iTCO_wdt: initialized. heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   22.114275] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   22.227213] battery: ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery present) Jul 17 14:53:50 argos kernel: [   22.665955] intel_powerclamp: No package C-state available

Is any of that helpful for working out what might be wrong?

Thanks for any advice

Graham

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