On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 08:51:31AM -0700, Jaye Inabnit ke6sls wrote: > On Friday 20 September 2002 03:29 am, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: > > [Although laptop-related, it is not debian-specific. But you're a > > helpful lot, aren't you? :-) ] > > > > I'm suspecting that the batteries in my laptop are getting old - or that > > something is buggy in hardware / bios. > > > > Reason: The batteries charge in a odd way: They will charge (eventually) > > to anything between 35% and 65% (40 in the example below) and then > > *suddenly* become 100% full !? > > > > Discharging is a bit odd too - they will go seemingly linearly from 100% > > to anything between 80% and 50% (~70% in example below) and then drop > > quite steeply. > > Greetings Jorgensen: [Uh-oh. People only call me by my surname when I'm in trouble!] > The batteries could be both getting old, and also needing a complete cycling > to reset the values. In my bios, I have a special *mode* that completely > discharges the batteries, then charges them completely and *learns* the > cycle, then repeats the procedure. Unfortunately my bios does not have that option :-( > Yet as batteries age, they will give less service life. I expected that. But not being a battery expert, I don't even know whether the age affects the shape of the charge/discharge curves. There must be some "foresic expert" somewhere who can date batteries based on the curves :-) > A problem that I see is that my unit doesn't leave any cool down time for > the batteries. It would be much better if it would let them cool for 1/2 > hour and then charge them up. Hm. It sounds like a bios update might be in order then - problem is that Dell isn't too forthcoming wrt "what's changed" - I don't want to loose apm alltogether (I hear that acpi isn't quite there yet...) I'll try experimenting with the temperature though - i.e. taking them out for an hour out, once they're fully charged. > If you don't have this feature, then perhaps see if there is a local shop > that has a stand alone smart charger that could do it for you. I used to > take my two-way radio batteries in to a place here that I found quite > helpful. After they were cycled, they were back to at least 85% of life > which bought me another year before I had to retire them. Hm. I'll ask at my local laptop repair shop; but they usually charge a fortune... -- Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com www.karl.jorgensen.com ==== Today's fortune: Chemist who falls in acid is absorbed in work.
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