On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 01:20:14PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote: > On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: > > > System info: [DH]ell Inspiron 4000, BIOS A16, kernel 2.4.18 with apm, > > Li-ion batteries > > Shite! I wish I saw this earlier! > > This is my laptop, and it developed a bad battery in December last year. I > replcaced it under waranty, and went on the BIOS upgrading cycle. Every > new BIOS fixed bugs with the charger, but caused new ones. But A21 seems > to have fixed all of my problems, and has not caused any new ones. I am > using APM, it works just fine! Ah! I'll get hold of the bios upgrade. They even seem to have A22 available now (!) But for now, I'll hold off on actually performing the upgrade; the laptop is rather important for work at the moment, and I don't want to risk anything with it. Besides, I like the uptime. > The problem with all earlier BIOSs is that they didn't know how to charge > the battery, and keep it charged, if you kept the system online all the > time, with never removing the power or turning it off. After 2 weeks or > so, my battery always started losing charge, even when the thing was > plugged in. This eventually killed the battery. That sounds similar to what I've been experiencing... I wonder; since it is still under warranty (just), perhaps I can get some new batteries out of Dell? (after all, it would be their bios that killed 'em) Based on previous experience with Dell (UK), I don't have any reason to be optimistic... > The battery is a smart battery, and it calibrates it charging time, rate, > etc, in combination with the BIOS. There is a utility from the DELL > website somewhere (sorry, can't remember where) that will recalibrate the > battery. Perhaps search google or dell.com for "battery calibrate inspiron > 4000"? I had a look at it, and it doesn't look appealing; will run for 10 hours (!) And it looks like its a stand-alone (=no OS) thing. Bummer. In the mean time I'll package the utility I wrote to collect stats; hopefully somebody (with more knowledge than me) will be able to actually make sense out of them :-) -- Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com www.karl.jorgensen.com ==== Today's fortune: Mediocrity finds safety in standardization. -- Frederick Crane
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