The repair I was talking about is mostly physically replacing cells with new ones and making the pack work with the laptop again. There's enough difference between the prices of cells (lithium ion) and the packs (Dell wants $110 for mine) to make that worthwhile.
But there are other repairs. You can buy batteries on eBay cheap that have been "refilled" only sometimes they aren't that great. I'd like to know what's going on inside. Also other things: I installed a new WiFi card and in the process of finding the right Windows driver for it Windows bluescreened a few times. Now one battery isn't recognized at all, the other is permanently discharged and won't charge, either under Windows or OpenBSD. Something got written to an EEPROM somewhere, unless something popped the thermal fuse inside the pack or fried some hardware in the laptop. The 2 batteries have different symptoms. Most of these schemes use an adapter with a few transistors or an IC to connect to a disconnected battery pack over a USB or LPT port, they don't disrupt what's happening in the computer. The bus is related to iic or i2c with slight differences. There are 2 wires (clock and data) plus ground. Try "sysctl | grep bat" (on a laptop). How do the analog cell voltages get converted to digital values you read on the screen? It's in the battery pack itself. There's a TI "gas gauge" chip or similar in the pack. There's more at work than most people suspect, some are even passworded. See http://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Miller/BH_US_11_Miller_Battery_Firmware_Public_WP.pdf until it gets moved. Alan On 4/28/13, Francois Pussault <fpussa...@contactoffice.fr> wrote: > > > Battery repair soft-tools are just fake or legend for laptops, > because most of batteries are using LI-ON technology > > so when battery has been badly used (for example still in the machine while > running 100% of time on sector for about a year), > the battery is chemically modified inside of itself. > > so it can never be repaired, you can get a few more battery time for example > a battery that take charge of 50% its nominal capacity, will go up back to > 60 or 75% for a short period of time (few month) (software tools will show > 100% but reality will be 60 to 75%). > > but then will decrease it capacity very fast , faster by far, than if you > didn't try to force its repair... > > & this is worst again, for older batteries technologies. > > hardware tools exist that can do the job with better results but they are > not cheap. > > >> ---------------------------------------- >> From: Alan Corey <alan01...@gmail.com> >> Sent: Sun Apr 28 07:16:46 CEST 2013 >> To: <misc@openbsd.org> >> Subject: open source laptop battery repair? >> >> >> Just wondering if anyone knows about tools for laptop battery repair >> that might run under OpenBSD. The "smart batteries" have a >> microprocessor that interfaces to the cells and talks to the cpu over >> an smbus. ACPI talks to that bus, but it can't help with broken >> batteries or replacing cells. >> >> Google for a pdf called BH_US_11_Miller_Battery_Firmware_Public_WP.pdf >> if you want to read more. There's a semi-commercial program called >> be2works designed for cell replacement and such, but the full version >> is $300. Is there anything open source? >> >> BTW: Miller's bibliography at the end of the pdf above is quite good. >> I was able to download all the pdfs he mentions. Most are from TI. >> Unfortunately he was working with Apple hardware, I've got Dell. But >> he got in there with logic analyzers and the whole bit. >> >> Alan >> -- >> Credit is the root of all evil. - AB1JX >> > > > Cordialement > Francois Pussault > 3701 - 8 rue Marcel Pagnol > 31100 Toulouse > France > +33 6 17 230 820 +33 5 34 365 269 > fpussa...@contactoffice.fr > -- Credit is the root of all evil. - AB1JX
