[ltp] Re: poll: how is your battery? (9-cell-battery lost about 25% capacity in 10 months)

[David A. Desrosiers]

> still... what's battery trainer?

 	After a lengthy call with "Harold" in IBM Atlanta yesterday, 
he suggested I download the "PC Doctor for DOS" on the ibm.com website 
to help diagnose/fix the problem with the battery issue.

 	I have two T23 laptops here, 1 personal, 1 IBM-provided for 
work. They both refuse to charge their respective batteries. I've now 
had a total of 3 T23 batteries in these two laptops. The "work" laptop 
just had its battery replaced because the previous battery wasn't 
holding a charge either.

 	One of them is at about 5% with 45 seconds of use, and the 
other used to be at 87%, but over the last couple of days, has dropped 
to 27%. The IBM "work" T23 is plugged into AC 24x7, and I hibernate it 
at night before I go to bed. The other either stays off, or is plugged 
in while I work on it. With the work laptop plugged in 24x7, I should 
see a 100% charge all the time, but over the days, it has slowly lost 
capacity, from 87% to 62% to 27%, and falling.

 	So I searched around the house to find 3 floppy diskettes (not 
an easy task in these times, I haven't used a floppy in literally 
years!). I copied the PC Doctor images to floppy, booted each one up, 
and ran the "Full diagnostics" from the application on my personal 
laptop. "Harold" wanted me to see if there was an error code or other 
error that would show up that could help him diagnose it on his end, 
to see if the charging circuit was bad, or the battery, or some other 
component of the system.

 	But buried in the menus of PC Doctor for DOS was an item 
called "Battery Rundown", which basically churns every device it can 
to completely drain the battery. CPU, floppy, screen, coprocessor, and 
everything else.

 	I ran both of my T23 batteries down to nothing, to the point 
where the laptop yells with the loud klaxon warning "BEEBOOOBEEEBOOO" 
and then shuts down.

 	After that, I powered back up on AC with battery attached, ran 
the full diagnostics again, and got myself some dinner. I came back 
and noticed that the amber battery light was now showing green (!!!), 
the first time in months that its been green. I popped the battery out 
and put it into the other T23 to check the capacity, and it reported 
100%.

 	WHOA!

 	So I did the same exact process with the other T23's battery, 
and had the same results. Both batteries were now charged to 100%, and 
as I type this, they're holding that charge.

 	I have no idea what exactly happened or what PC Doctor for DOS 
did there, but these batteries have been pretty dead for months, and 
now they seem to be working great.

 	I'm going to try the same thing on my T42p, assuming that this 
PC Doctor for DOS can recognize and run against my T42p. I'll do some 
careful measurements of voltage before and after and see what I come 
up with.


David A. Desrosiers
desrod@gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com