Thinkpads Forum

I just finished replacing the LI-ON cells in my T21 battery. Dangerous, yes. But I did my homework first, and knew the dangers/cautions/warnings.

I ended up with the same cell size (18650) but a higher density.

The battery new was originally rated at 38.88Wh according to the battery information screen. It now reads 42.77Wh, and estimates the TP will run for about 4.5 hours. Much better than the 5 minutes I was getting.

Q:
Is there a way to reset the cycle count in the battery information data?

Joe

Whoohoo!

That would require writing/clearing a specific area in the battery's memory chip. Without having a data dump of said memory or the means to write into it, I'd say just live with an incorrect counter. If and when you sell the battery, it could be an asset (Wow! 954 cycles and it still has that much of a charge! That's great!) or a liability (Wow! 954 cycles! No way I'm buying that!).

Ummm...
It reads 67 as the count, so I guess I'll keep my mouth shut.

I ran the laptop on battery alone last night and after 2 hours of surfing and google video/you tube crap, the meter read 72% remaining with an estimated 3:05 hours left.

I'll have to schedule a marathon and get actual numbers.

Now I wonder what my results would be if I had RMClock installed instead of the processor being locked at max... hmmm....

Whats the longest anyone had their laptops run on battery alone?

Joe

My T40's 6 cell doesn't run longer than 3.5 to 4 hours, but I borrowed an X41T form a coworker that had a standard 6 cell and an extended 8 cell strapped onto the bottom that allowed it to run for 6.5 to 7 hours (not bad for used batteries.)

If you want to get good, repeatable exhaustion times for your batteries you can use the Battery Rundown test in PC Doctor. It executes some of the normal diagnostics while keeping track of the time it takes for the battery to drain. In other words, you don't have to sit around and watch the system; just start it and walk away. The next time PC Doctor is booted, you can check to see what the previous execution time was. Note that it won't translate directly to an amount of time you can expect to use the laptop in a normal situation; it merely provides a way of comparing one battery against another or allows you to see if several deep discharge/charge cycles helps to increase capacity.

PC Doctor for T2x

joester wrote: Whats the longest anyone had their laptops run on battery alone?

My R40 gets just over 6 hours under very light loads (mostly idle, maybe wordprocessing) but when given a heavier load such as watching video, about 4 hours.

Hi RK,

Will like to know how do you access the battery run-down test.
I have a x24 and PC-Doctor 3.1.860 but I do not see that option anywhere inside the PC-Doctor, is it in another version?

Cheers

The battery rundown option should appear in the DOS version of PC Doctor for the X2x systems. Go to the "Utility" section, then select "Battery Rundown". There will be two options there: "Perform Battery Rundown" and "Show last execution time". Remove the AC adapter and select the "Perform" option and it will start executing various diagnostics. When the battery is drained, re-attach the AC adapter, boot the system back into the PC Doctor diagnostics and select the "Show" option. That will tell you how long the system ran.

Managed to get the battery run down test after booting off the floopy.

Thx a million

Cheers