T20 bios update irreversible problem!!!

[pierlo]

Hallo all! (first post here) - I hope this is the right place for this... ok let me tell you the incredible problem i am experienceing on my t20 :
I have a t20 (bought it on ebay + a "new" battery which lasted 1:15 hrs.) which was running nicely until today. The only deal was that i could not stand the miserable 1.1/4 hour long battery (thought it should be at least 2 hrs or so) so i started tuning up the battery settings with the Maximiser app etc. until i came into the ibm website and found out that my bios was version 1.21 and that the latest one (1.22) provided a "better power management". So what would you do? of course, i downloaded the non-diskette version of the bios (i have no floppy reader!) and started the upgrade. All went fine - the machine halted afterwards (as described on the manual) and then i rebooted the laptop. Tadah! Now the laptop doesn't seem to recognize the battery and gives me strange behaviors, includind that the battery does not recharge. (actually, the battery led goes (and remains) to still orange, which should mean it is charging, but after some hours the battery is still cold plus if i detach the ac adaptor, the laptop turns off in a couple of minutes) Additionally, when i unplug the ac, the battery maximiser doesn't seem to understand it's running on battery, and the plug icon in the systray remains there (instead of turning into the battery one).
So what i figured out, is "I absolutely need to downgrade the bios!" but guess what : the program claims for a fully charged battery to avoid sudden and dangerous poweroffs! so... WHAT CAN I DO!??!?!!? this is a nightmare, i can't stop having problems with my thinkpad! help me please!!!

[beeblebrox]

Hi Pierlo,

your problem sound pretty much common these days and I have seen it several times in other thinkpad news groups as well.

I don't have that problem with BIOS 1.22, but I saw that all folks who bought "compatible" (i.e. not original by IBM) replacement batteries had exactly the same problem.
Not 100% sure, but it seems that IBM is trying to fend off imitators and try to sell their outrageaously expensive IBM batteries. (similar to the new BIOS in T40, that specifically checks for IBM wireless cards and rejects any other (e.g. cheap Dell) brand).
The only solution would possibly be to find an IBM dealer, where you could use an original battery for 30 seconds.

However, strangely, in my T20 the new BIOS 1.22 is doing stupid things with battery loading. After the BIOS upgrade my battery dropped from 2h down to 45min or even 5 min.
First I panicked with the costs of a new IBM battery, but then forgot to turn off the notebook during lunch.
I then realized that the Battery told me 6% charge and "1 minute left". It told me that for another 90 minutes!

I verfied this behavior several times, so the new BIOS is somewhat buggy ??!

[pierlo]

hi and thanks for the reply!
in the end, i did some "hacking" (i booted with win98 cdrom and then i booted with dos no-cdrom support so that i could finally launch the qkflash program that succesfully (actually not really - it gave some errors) flashed the embedded controller (again, not really sure if that actually happened...) with the previous version (1.21) -> but after this extreme attempt, the battery was finally recognized again (perhaps i down-flashed the embedded controller) and i could finally use the bios setup utility since it was seeing the battery as charged. The bios downgrade was apparently ok. But guess what?! Now the battery lasts 2 minutes or so... so even tho my battery is working again, i still must buy another one, and guess what brand i'm going to buy this time? In the end, they've won... i'm really disappointed.

[pierlo]

ah i forgot to reply: i had the same exact behavior with my compatible battery as well (before the bios upgrade, so with bios v. 1.21) : it went down from 100% to 5 in around an hour, and the stayed until 1% for more than half an hour. If i must say, that was one of the main reasons why i decided to upgrade the bios, reading from the download page (IBM website) : " Enhancement of the battery control." !!! UNBELIEVABLE!

[egibbs]

Just a comment,

Despite the occasional glitches (usually caused by accountants) IBM is a company of engineers who are devoted (again, for the most part) to engineering excellence.

The IBM batteries ARE ridiculously expensive - compared to the batteries built by companies whose main concern is shipping product as quickly and cheaply as possible. Now you know why - because they work.

My T20 is still on the original (5 years old or so) battery. Yes, it doesn't last as long as it used to, but it's still pretty good.

Would you put K-Mart spark plugs in a Porsche?

Ed Gibbs

[pierlo]

Hallo,

well, i did not mean to offend the hard-working folks at IBM - i was only attacking the deprecable and monopolistic policy IBM is pursuing... of course in my low-level-customer humble opinion! i mean: of course IBM batteries are better and nicer and whatever-er but IBM just *should not* force me to buy them. There's lots of material for anti-trust lawyers here i guess