[ltp] Has my battery failed?

[Norman Levin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Willoughby" <tonyw@pobox.com>
To: "Linux Thinkpad Mailing List" <linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: [ltp] Has my battery failed?


| 
| I'm really surprised that it would fail so suddenly.

Sometimes the plates in a battery will start to 'curl' with age.  When one flexes
enough to touch another plate, you have a cell that is shorted and the voltage drops to
what the other cells can handle - if you are lucky.

You can take the battery out, put a face cloth on a table (well padded) and give the
battery a healthy flat slam on the table.  On occassions, that may move some plates and
give you a little more life - but it does sound like a replacement is due.
| 
| What should I expect to pay for a replacement?
| 
| 
| 
| On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 13:58, Michael W. Holdeman wrote:
| > My 600 did exactly the same thing. A new battery and it is up and running good 
| > as new.
| > 
| > Mike
| > 
| > 
| > On Tuesday 26 November 2002 09:08 am, Tony Willoughby wrote:
| > > My 390E has stopped detecting/using the battery.
| > >
| > > My typical practice when leaving work for the day is to run "shutdown"
| > > and then pull the power cord to to pack it up.  The system continues to
| > > shutdown on battery power.
| > >
| > > One day last week I did this and the system powered off immediately.
| > > Since then it will not power up unless connected to the AC.  "apm"
| > > reports: "AC on-line", it used to report the % charge of the battery.
| > > Reseating the battery hasn't helped.
| > >
| > > apm reports the following when started..
| > >
| > > Nov 26 09:06:39 localhost apmd: apmd startup succeeded
| > > Nov 26 09:06:39 localhost apmd[1845]: Version 3.0.2 (APM BIOS 1.2, Linux
| > > driver 1.16)
| > > Nov 26 09:06:40 localhost apmd[1845]: Charge: * * * (-1% unknown)
| > >
| > > I always assumed that battery failures would be gradual, not sudden like
| > > this.  Has my battery failed or is something else wrong?
| > 
| > -- 
| > Michael W. Holdeman
| > Powered by Gentoo Linux 1.2 http://www.gentoo.org
| > Linux kernel 2.4.19 /LowLatency /preemption
| > Windows apps via Win4Lin4.0
| -- 
| Tony Willoughby     tonyw@pobox.com
| 
| "Enjoy every sandwich..."
|   - Warren Zevon 30-October-2002
| 
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