Thinkpad Flashing Battery

[pentium]

Re: Thinkpad Flashing Battery

YES!!
The battery finally came in and inside was 103448AR 3.7v 1650mAh cell. It sure isn't as described on the external packaging but at $4 a cell it's worth buying three more and trying anyways.

Edited: The seller ran out of batteries and isn't restocking. We have to try again with someone else.

[pentium]

Re: Thinkpad Flashing Battery

BuMP for follow-up and closure.

So it turns out that it's basically illegal in my province to spot weld new tabs onto these lithium cells. Something about being more unstable than the usual lithium cells. The cost of getting the equipment outweighed the one time use so I bought another set and this time proceeded to rebuild with the tabs kept on.




The new cells unfortunately are tabbed on one side only so the rebuild will involve routing new wire around the pack differently. I'll be using telephone line wire which should handle the load.




A piece of thin cardboard was sandwiched between the two sets of cells to prevent shorting. Black electrical tape was used between the cells to also prevent shorts.




With the pack partially assembled I reinstalled it in the TransNote, pressed power and we got to POST. Then the computer warned of a critical battery and shut down. They're new cells so I assume they have never been charged so I plugged in the AC adapter and booted up. The battery panel indicated it was charging. It was slow but indeed it was charging. I'm going to say right now that the life is still going to suck because these are really crappy cells but we now at least know it works. I'll keep a close eye on the cells as they charge and warm up so I can remove them if they try and race away for any reason.

[Time2Retire]

Re: Thinkpad Flashing Battery

Good to hear that you have had some success with this.

[pentium]

Re: Thinkpad Flashing Battery

Limited success. The first full cycle was terrible and only gave me a half hour tops. I'm pretty sure it is because I chose to use brandless chinese crap instead of first party cells but I still cannot find good sources on those not to mention the previous statement about getting tabs spot welded on. :/

[pentium]

Re: Thinkpad Flashing Battery

Further research shows that the recell did actually work and almost an hour and a half can be achieved once you force suspend and hibernation. The issue appears to be that the original cells have a discharge curve that is different from these cells and the charge controller does not adjust and assumes you're still using the original batteries with the improved curve. The new cells give the low power warning at around 40% (after about 15 minutes), the machine will run down to 6% after another 15 minutes with a minute of life and sit there for an hour before setting the critical battery alert and dropping down to 4% and eventually 1% at which point the machine powers off.
Not much I can do here. It pretty much means that I need to use cells rated for the original's specification or better or else I will have the machine shutting down too early.