[ltp] R40 battery woes

[Paul Kaplan]

I've had a refurbished R40 (2682-XX3) for about a year.  Not surprisingly, the 
battery performance slowly degraded dropping from about 2 hours of power when 
I first got the machine to about 30 minutes at 1 year.

As per IBMs recommendations, I tried reconditioning the battery by running the 
power to 0 and then recharging overnight with the machine off.  The battery 
did not charge and reported 1% remaining charge, which would not change.

Thinking the problem was with the battery, I bought a replacement battery, but 
it too would not charge.  I had the same (lack of) response with both 
batteries under Linux a Windows, so I'm pretty certain, I'm not looking at a 
software problem.

Any ideas?  What sort of hardware problem would result in the inability to 
charge a battery even when it is reported as being installed with 1% 
remaining power?  ((I don't have an external charger.)  Would this be 
hard/expensive to fix?

TIA
Paul