You are correct, those are very interesting points. If your understanding of the connector is correct, you should be able to recondition the cells individually. Or, if you can use a tester to find the bad one, just recondition that one.
If it's less than a year old, I would suspect a manufacturing defect in the battery. Wouldn't be the first time... -wes On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Eitan Tsur <[email protected]> wrote: > The interesting thing is A: this is a new battery, bought last year, when I > acquired the laptop as a gift. B: I have a PII (yes, that's a 2)-era > laptop > made by HP that still works perfectly. C: I've used my R/C li-ion/li-poly > charger and balancer on totally dead packs before and they come back to > almost full life again. As soon as I find an appropriate header I plan to > do the same for these. It's interesting because the battery packs for this > laptop seem to be controllerless. (connector off pack has taps from each > cell pair). Usually from what I've seen most commonly from other laptops > in > the past is that the cell pairs get unbalanced, which causes charging to > shut off prematurely. In this case it's just not charging at all. > > On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:40 PM, wes <[email protected]> wrote: > > > For a 10 year old laptop, it will likely be much faster/easier (not to > > mention cheaper) to find another of the same model on ebay, maybe with a > > broken screen, and swap parts, than it would be to actually repair the > > circuitry on the board. > > > > I understand the reasoning behind not just getting a different model > > altogether, but 10 years is really pushing the limits of laptop life > > expectancy. I am on my 3rd Latitude D800 (with parts from the first 2 > still > > going) and am about to start looking for my 4th parts donor.... > > > > All that said, it is far more likely to be the battery itself as Joe > Pruett > > stated. This is just based on my experience. > > > > Since you have a spare battery, this should be very easy to test. > > > > -wes > > > > On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Eitan Tsur <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I have a ~10(?) year old laptop that has recently stopped charging it's > > > battery. (few days ago it stopped charging past ~30%, ran on battery > for > > 5 > > > minutes, laptop died, now shows 0% charge). Does anyone know what the > > > first > > > step would be to diagnose this issue? Laptop itself powers up just > fine > > on > > > wall power, and I have a spare battery I can try to verify it isn't a > > blown > > > fuse or something in this pack. If I can find a 7 pin 2mm pitch header > I > > > plan to hook up my li-ion charger/balancer to the pack to recharge, > > however > > > I fear the charging circuit on the motherboard may have gone out. > > Assuming > > > this is the case, does anyone have the knowledge or experience to > > > diagnose/repair this? I've done SMD rework before, but circuit > > > design/reverse engineering/testing is beyond me. Any advice will be > > > appreciated. > > > > > > regards, > > > -Eitan Tsur- > > > _______________________________________________ > > > PLUG mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > PLUG mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
