On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:51:06 +0000, Baron
wrote:
A replacement primary battery came today for daughters Latitude D520
and when I fitted it the BIOS Battery Info screen when from 'not
installed' (empty bay or with the old battery fitted) to 'Discharging'
with the new battery so that was something. ;-)
Sounds like the protection circuits in the battery killed the feed to
charge it. If you decide to investigate you will probably find that
one or more cells has died.
OK, now we are back online with a new battery I may well have a closer
look. I understand it wasn't lasting very long before it failed but
the presence of the modular battery masked it a bit.
snip
I put it back in it's case,
taped it up and powered it up, LED on and 19V on the output. ;-)
Sounds good ! I bet you've done this before... ;-)
Indeed, with all sorts of stuff (I feel if it's already 'broken' you
have little to lose). I have always got more fun out of fixing
something then using it than just going out and buying it / a new one.
Mutter years ago I designed, built and ran my own mobile disco (for
my own pleasure really g). 1.5kw 3 way stereo PA, console with
mixer, 8 channel light sequencer (before you could easily buy such
things), strobe and all the speaker cabs etc. I drove it about in a
Morris Minor van that I bought for £25 and put another gearbox in at
the car park where I bought it before I could drive it home. ;-) [1]
Plugged it into the D520, "AC Adaptor = 90W' and the primary battery
status changed to 'Charging'. ;-)
So the D520 looked like it had two faults, a dead primary battery and
faulty ID function (I'll check that one out tomorrow). It also seems
the modular bay battery isn't so fussy about the PSU and has been
charging and working ok.
Yea, a result !
A result indeed g. She likes the D520 and was happy to carry on with
it even as it was. We /could/ get her something else but this laptop
does have a nice substantial feel to it so we are all happy it's fully
working again. [2] The replacement battery ran for 3 hours this
morning and the modular battery is at least 80% good.
We then tried the same 'test' PSU in daughters b/fs not-charging
Inspiron 1545 and it also now detects the charger but didn't seem to
want to start to charge. He says the battery had about 2hrs life
before it stopped charging. A mate has a 1545 so we will try his
battery in this one before doing anything further.
I'll provide another update as / when we know anything on that.
Thanks for this update ! Its nice to know.
My pleasure. So, we took his laptop to my mates PC show and were lucky
to have the chance to try all different combinations of laptop,
battery and charger.
The first smile was to see a known good battery and charger in his
lappy charging AOk (so all the charging circuitry was ok phew). The
second was later back at home when my multifunction charger arrived
from eBay and was 'seen' by the Dells as a 90W adaptor. The cherry on
the cake was when he left the Targus connected and after about an hour
mentioned that his presumed 'dead' battery was now showing 14% charge.
Left it slowly rose to 100% and he's currently running it down and has
run about 40 mins with 20 left.
I' thin opened the original chargers for both machines and both had
broken data wires at the plug end. I have 3 on their way at a fiver
each and if they work they will be cheap genuine chargers. ;-)
I found this very interesting on Youtube (very well put together as
well):
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5r8rl79
We picked up a clone Dell charger that seems to advertise it's a 150W
device (it isn't, it's a 90W). Maybe someone found a batch of unwanted
chips or thought that responding with '150W' would make more kit
happy?
Cheers, T i m
[1] My most recent challenge was a 13 month old Zanussi washing
machine I picked up on Freecycle. It had been written off by the
insurance Co with failed bearings as not being economical to repair
because the drum was in a /sealed/ plastic tub. I was also told by all
the whitegoods gurus that it was a lost cause but it's still running
very well some 18 months later. weg
[2] The screen feels a bit floppy on the hinges so I'd like to check
that out and I'm going to fit a new power socket before she takes it
back up to Scotland (400 miles away).