[ltp] T20 battery not charging or showing up?

[Nick Rout]

My T20 has developed a strange problem. It sat unused for a while (maybe 
a couple of weeks), and at that point was running XP.

I started it up the other day and the battery seemed flat, which didn't 
worry me unduly. My plan was to transfer all data off it and install 
ubuntu, which I duly did. I noticed while it was still in XP that the 
battery didn't seem to have charged at all. Once I had ubuntu up and 
running the battery indicator says there is no battery present, and 
unplugging the power brings it to a grinding halt, so there is 
definitely no battery power getting to the computer.

The battery is just over a year old, I bought it when my son started 
using it a school just over a year ago. It has been working fine prior 
to now. I have taken the battery out and put it back in several times. 
The battery light by the back of the computer glows constant orange 
(although yesterday I am sure it was flashing).

The kernel is set to boot with noacpi acpi=off and the apm module is 
loaded.

apm -dv gives:

nick@radagast:~$ apm -dv
APM BIOS 1.2 (kernel driver 1.16ac)
On-line, battery charging
Using device 0x0a86, 1.16ac: 1.2
APM Flags      = 0x03; Line Status   = 0x01
Battery Status = 0x03; Battery Flags = 0x0c
Battery %age   =   -1; Battery Time  =   -1, use_mins=0

But the gnome battery status monitor says "System is running on AC 
Power, No Battery Present"

Any clues on where to go from here. Even the original battery used to 
confess to being there, even if it wouldn't hold charge for more than 5 
minutes. (Perhaps I should look for the old battery).