Tim Seufert wrote:
>It's my understanding that the 2400 can recognize the lower amperage power
>supply, and compensate for it. The compensation is that it will refuse to
>even try to charge the battery if the computer is turned on.
>
>At least, that's what I've been told. Never had the chance to try it.
That's an interesting feature, and worthy of a test. I just ran the battery
down to the Few Minute Warning with both halves of a modem/ethernet card in
use, MP3s playing out the sound port at top volume to unpowered speakers,
no CPU catnaps, full brightness, no spindown etc. I plugged in the 24W
supply at the point where the PB was about to go to sleep, and it claimed
to begin charging (and still is). How long it'll take to fully charge is a
different question, of course, but it's reached the second notch after
about six minutes. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Jeremy's Energy
Strip to read the actual power consumption in watts, but it was (and
presumably would be now) one notch above the little red line on the cute
Battery control strip module. I could also have connected an old SCSI
device to supply term power from the PB, but I'm a little paranoid about
pushing that right now. ;)
However, I'm not sure I can see a way for the 2400 to recognise the
amperage of the power supply anyway, other than knowing when there ain't no
more (if you see what I mean). Then again this is pushing the limits of my
electrical theory; if there's some theoretical way the PB could tell what
the maximum available current and power is (without attempting to exceed
it) I'd be interested to know. I can imagine that the charging circuit
would shut down when there wasn't enough "leftover" power available (ie.
when it had exceeded the capability of the supply).
and Alan wrote:
>I have used a car adapter from my 2300c for the 2400c and it works fine. I
>don't know if you can use the higher capacity ac adapters in reverse, as you
>mentioned, using a 3400 ac adapter for a 2300c laptop....
>I do know from experience that the reverse holds true.
>Again, do NOT attempt any of this WITHOUT the 2nd generation of ac adapters
>for the duo, the 1.5 amp instead of the duo 210 and 230 which only supplies
>1.04 amps
I'm curious why you consider this an IN-CAPS bad idea worthy of advising
people against; have you tested the power consumption of the newer model
PBs, heard some theoretical reason stated, or seen one of the older
supplies die screaming horribly? As I noted in another anecdotal message, I
have used a 230 supply (the same one I'm using now in fact) to power a 3400
and a Wallstreet I model (though the latter had no battery). Battery
charging was very slow in the 3400 while the computer was on, but it did
charge, and no smoke came out of anything that day.
--
Marc Sira | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can't play with words, what good are they?"
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