Hi, On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Paul Hartman <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was > manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all > those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I > did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and > ~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen: > > 1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about > halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective > battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I > understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries, > the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when > the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power > while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level > when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is > "full" even though it's only halfway there. > > Has anyone successfully re-calibrated one of these batteries to > recognize a larger capacity? > > My understanding is that, to do this, I should discharge at a constant > rate until it is empty, then charge to full. Repeat ?? times. I've > drained the poor little battery after regular usage (not a constant > rate of discharge) a few times and haven't noticed any change so far. > So I'm probably doing it wrong (or completely misunderstanding...) > > This is complicated by my second problem: > > 2) If I click on the Power Management in the KDE system settings, it > says "Number of CPUs 0" "Number of batteries 0" and battery-related > options are greyed out. Since battery monitoring does not work, I have > no idea how much battery life is left and have no warning when it > suddenly shuts down, causing filesystem corruption and who knows what > other problems.
I would guess that you are missing either hal or solid? > > Everything in /proc/acpi/battery/ seems normal and /proc/cpuinfo does as well: > > $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info > present: yes > design capacity: 4400 mAh > last full capacity: 1984 mAh > battery technology: rechargeable > design voltage: 14800 mV > design capacity warning: 300 mAh > design capacity low: 100 mAh > cycle count: 0 > capacity granularity 1: 32 mAh > capacity granularity 2: 32 mAh > model number: 01ZG > serial number: 1020 > battery type: LION > OEM info: SMP > > $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state > present: yes > capacity state: ok > charging state: charged > present rate: 0 mA > remaining capacity: 1984 mAh > present voltage: 16384 mV > > $ cat /proc/cpuinfo > processor : 0 > vendor_id : AuthenticAMD > cpu family : 15 > model : 28 > model name : Mobile AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+ > stepping : 0 > cpu MHz : 2000.000 > cache size : 512 KB > fpu : yes > fpu_exception : yes > cpuid level : 1 > wp : yes > flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge > mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext > fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good > bogomips : 4009.21 > TLB size : 1024 4K pages > clflush size : 64 > cache_alignment : 64 > address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual > power management: ts fid vid ttp > > That all seems to look normal to me, so I'm not sure if I'm missing > some setting somewhere else. > > Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. > > Thanks, > Paul > > Best regards Petri Rosenström
