Graham Seaman wrote:
I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been
working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty;
if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop
is completely dead.
I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm unlikely
to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there might be some
firmware or other software change that could account for it.
A quick search shows lots of people selling replacement
batteries from $12 to $60 US, most in the $20-25 range.
A secret of many laptop batteries, including this one, is that
the battery is largely a container to hold 18650 lithium battery
cells, which can be purchased separately.
Now, if the motherboard charging circuitry is toast, this won't
work, and you should consider a new machine.
-dsr-