RE: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:39:00 -0600 From: McClanahan, Eddie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding Here is a little more information about rebuilding the battery pack. I examined the circuit and got information about its function from several vendors of batteries - The circuit is there to optimize the power pack (battery) output during it expected life time range. The circuit monitors the total charge cycles, duration, discharge rate, and temperature of the batteries plus calculates the expected cycle usage time. The calculation parameters are given by the manufacture of the batteries. The cycle usage time is the data is supplied to the computer. In early battery packs when the circuit calculated the batteries were exceeding the optimized cycle usage and the circuit reported a very low usage time plus would automatically shut down the computer even though you could measure the battery output with load and see the batteries were good. To reset the battery required disconnecting the circuit, waiting 5 minutes and reconnecting the circuit and it indicate 100% user time. Note there is one or two cell directly connected to the monitoring circuit. Now, if you check closely, the battery monitoring circuit has a crystal device which mean a clock and a memory chip which mean the circuit does not reset when disconnected. Additionally if the battery manufacture and the manufacture of the computer are friends both have the possibility to communicate the cycle and charge frequencies of the battery, so just replacing the dead cells may not bring the bat pack back to life for the computer. Ever notice the ID of the battery pack indicated in the control panel? Reg- McClanahan -Original Message- From: Matt Hanson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 1:21 AM To: Libretto Subject: Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 23:20:00 -0800 (PST) From: Matt Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding --- John Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am thinking about buying lithium cells of the same dimension and capacity (ideally even the same make and model), unsoldering the bad cells, and rebuilding the pack. Has anyone done this? Are there any special tricks? A few people have had success rebuilding their battery packs. You do have to be very careful to get everything reassembled exactly without damaging the ciruit board, mis-wiring things, or making any other errors. LiIon batteries not installed correctly can explode and make an average day turn into a nightmware. It'd be smart to plug the rebuilt battery pack into a Libby battery charger, put the charger on one side or a wall, and run the cord around to the other side before plugging it in and testing to see if the rebuild went well. With that warning though, you can get replacement cells from Sabah Oceanic: http://sabahoceanic.com You'd want the Panasonic CGR17670HG cells. Plug that part number into Sabah's search engine and you'll find them at $7.40USD each. Nice thing is that they're 1500mah instead of the original 1200mah cells, so they're power the Libbys a bit longer. The original cells were 17mm by 67mm, and those CGR17670HGs are a hair shorter, so they'll fit fine. There are also 18mm wide Panasonic cells that a couple people squeezed in by hacking off the sides of the battery pack shell. They are higher capacity, but the finished rebuild looks like hell. Not a huge problem those I guess, as I think only the top and back sides get hacked off. Once in the Libby, I don't think it looks normal. Sabah will also weld soldering tabs onto to the cells for free. They do that overseas, so I guess they aren't subject to suits that could develop if they were providing the cells from here in the USA. In fact they say they'll weld cells to any spec they're provided with. I was wondering if I could send them the dismantled battery pack, and have them attach the whole circuit board onto the new cells for me. You could also get one of the extended battery packs for the 50/70s off EBay that go for a lost less than the ones for the 100/110s, and then just swap the contents. That worked fine for me. I had one of those for my 70CT. Dropping it's guts in the 110 pack works fine, and has for everyone I've heard from that's done this. I just never bothered to glue the 2 halves of the pack together, as I'd like to go the Sabah route myself at some point. And the pack stays together quite nicely after it's plugged into the Libby. I see that I can buy a new pack for around $100, but I'm a bit skeptical - not sure how I avoid getting a used pack for my $100. I also found some places that commercially rebuild battery packs. What do you think about these alternatives? As I pointed out, everyone I've written has had success just buying a 50/70 pack on EBay, and swapping. Someone complained that you never know what thecondition
RE: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:38:35 -0600 From: John Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding That is very interesting. I did some reading about the Smart Battery standard used in most notebook batteries and concluded that my Lib's battery is so smart that it must have committed suicide from boredom during the year that the Lib sat in the closet. Anyway, I bought a PA2503UR hi-cap battery from eBay for $54 and will use that to confirm that the DC power circuit of my Lib is actually working. Then I'll try rebuilding the old batteries. Listen for the BOOM. 9. RE: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding Here is a little more information about rebuilding the battery pack. I examined the circuit and got information about its function from several vendors of batteries - The circuit is there to optimize the power pack (battery) output during it expected life time range. The circuit monitors the total charge cycles, duration, discharge rate, and temperature of the batteries plus calculates the expected cycle usage time. The calculation parameters are given by the manufacture of the batteries. The cycle usage time is the data is supplied to the computer. In early battery packs when the circuit calculated the batteries were exceeding the optimized cycle usage and the circuit reported a very low usage time plus would automatically shut down the computer even though you could measure the battery output with load and see the batteries were good. To reset the battery required disconnecting the circuit, waiting 5 minutes and reconnecting the circuit and it indicate 100% user time. Note there is one or two cell directly connected to the monitoring circuit. Now, if you check closely, the battery monitoring circuit has a crystal device which mean a clock and a memory chip which mean the circuit does not reset when disconnected. Additionally if the battery manufacture and the manufacture of the computer are friends both have the possibility to communicate the cycle and charge frequencies of the battery, so just replacing the dead cells may not bring the bat pack back to life for the computer. Ever notice the ID of the battery pack indicated in the control panel? Reg- McClanahan
Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 23:20:00 -0800 (PST) From: Matt Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding --- John Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am thinking about buying lithium cells of the same dimension and capacity (ideally even the same make and model), unsoldering the bad cells, and rebuilding the pack. Has anyone done this? Are there any special tricks? A few people have had success rebuilding their battery packs. You do have to be very careful to get everything reassembled exactly without damaging the ciruit board, mis-wiring things, or making any other errors. LiIon batteries not installed correctly can explode and make an average day turn into a nightmware. It'd be smart to plug the rebuilt battery pack into a Libby battery charger, put the charger on one side or a wall, and run the cord around to the other side before plugging it in and testing to see if the rebuild went well. With that warning though, you can get replacement cells from Sabah Oceanic: http://sabahoceanic.com You'd want the Panasonic CGR17670HG cells. Plug that part number into Sabah's search engine and you'll find them at $7.40USD each. Nice thing is that they're 1500mah instead of the original 1200mah cells, so they're power the Libbys a bit longer. The original cells were 17mm by 67mm, and those CGR17670HGs are a hair shorter, so they'll fit fine. There are also 18mm wide Panasonic cells that a couple people squeezed in by hacking off the sides of the battery pack shell. They are higher capacity, but the finished rebuild looks like hell. Not a huge problem those I guess, as I think only the top and back sides get hacked off. Once in the Libby, I don't think it looks normal. Sabah will also weld soldering tabs onto to the cells for free. They do that overseas, so I guess they aren't subject to suits that could develop if they were providing the cells from here in the USA. In fact they say they'll weld cells to any spec they're provided with. I was wondering if I could send them the dismantled battery pack, and have them attach the whole circuit board onto the new cells for me. You could also get one of the extended battery packs for the 50/70s off EBay that go for a lost less than the ones for the 100/110s, and then just swap the contents. That worked fine for me. I had one of those for my 70CT. Dropping it's guts in the 110 pack works fine, and has for everyone I've heard from that's done this. I just never bothered to glue the 2 halves of the pack together, as I'd like to go the Sabah route myself at some point. And the pack stays together quite nicely after it's plugged into the Libby. I see that I can buy a new pack for around $100, but I'm a bit skeptical - not sure how I avoid getting a used pack for my $100. I also found some places that commercially rebuild battery packs. What do you think about these alternatives? As I pointed out, everyone I've written has had success just buying a 50/70 pack on EBay, and swapping. Someone complained that you never know what thecondition of the pack will be before you get it. But I've not seen any complaints on the list from people who've gone that way. Another thing I'd like to do is to better understand how the battery pack works. Why are there so many contacts in the plug and what is all that circuitry doing? The circuitry appears to monitor the voltage between each pair of cells, there's something that looks like a temperature sensor taped to one cell, and there's another component (a slim bit of black plastic) wired to the board. Finally, is there a test I can do to verify my Libretto is working properly - I don't want to spend $50 or $100 on rebuilding or replacing battery packs and then find out it was a problem in the L100's power board. Raymond??!! Matt __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
[LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 10:59:21 -0600 From: John Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding Now that I have Win XP up and running on my L100, I notice that the Libretto will not run on either of my battery packs (hicap PA2503U and standard PA2502U). I think it was doing this before, when i last used the machine (1 year ago), so it is not a recent thing. What happens is: the battery LED glows either green or orange, the Windows power meter says the batteries are 100% or 99% charged, but when I unplug the AC adapter, the Libretto immediately shuts down. I have measured the voltage between the two end contacts on the batteries (one is marked positive, the other is marked negative) and this reads 6.4v (hicap pack) and 0.2v (standard pack). I have opened up the hi-cap pack and one pair of cells reads 3.7v, the middle pair reads 0.2v, and the last pair of cells reads 3.5v (these voltages are all approximate, I get a slightly different reading from my VOM with each measurement). So, I think the hi-cap pack has two bad cells and the standard pack has perhaps all bad cells. I am thinking about buying lithium cells of the same dimension and capacity (ideally even the same make and model), unsoldering the bad cells, and rebuilding the pack. Has anyone done this? Are there any special tricks? I see that I can buy a new pack for around $100, but I'm a bit skeptical - not sure how I avoid getting a used pack for my $100. I also found some places that commercially rebuild battery packs. What do you think about these alternatives? Another thing I'd like to do is to better understand how the battery pack works. Why are there so many contacts in the plug and what is all that circuitry doing? The circuitry appears to monitor the voltage between each pair of cells, there's something that looks like a temperature sensor taped to one cell, and there's another component (a slim bit of black plastic) wired to the board. Finally, is there a test I can do to verify my Libretto is working properly - I don't want to spend $50 or $100 on rebuilding or replacing battery packs and then find out it was a problem in the L100's power board.
Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 14:12:48 -0500 From: Tony Oresteen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding John, Glad to hear that you got XP running! I too had a bad battery problem with my L100CT. In the end I just bought two new ones off of ebay for $65 each. The are made in China but so far work great. Comes with a 1 year warranty. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=14299item=6740484536rd=1 They dropped the shipping to $15 for two. Without the special tools needed to open up the pack and re-seal them, it is hard to rebuild packs. Good luck. Tony Oresteen KG4SPA Montverde, FL - Original Message - From: John Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Libretto libretto@basiclink.com Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 2:00 PM Subject: [LIB] Libretto Batteries - Rebuilding I am thinking about buying lithium cells of the same dimension and capacity (ideally even the same make and model), unsoldering the bad cells, and rebuilding the pack. Has anyone done this? Are there any special tricks?
