New 9 cell battery issues.

[sooba]

Hey all, I am new to this site and am very impressed to see a lot of people appreciate the near endless qualities of an IBM. I bought a t20 a couple years ago after I had a dell and will NEVER go back to a dell, though lenovo now owning the name ThinkPad scares me now sometimes from what I've been reading.

Anyways, I recently bought a "new" Sony 9 cell battery (92p1013) off ebay. The add was listed with the pannosonic cell numbers (92p1063) but it turned out to be a Sony so I just kinda shrugged it off and told the seller. The battery at first showed 7+ hours and i was very happy until I noticed it was not actually preforming even 4 hours. I charged it two more times and noticed it will drop (within seconds) from 60-50 percent down to 3 or percent and i get all the warnings. I just preformed a full discharge to 0% and am now charging it to let it re-calibrate. I have the battery maximizer and the latest bios I've checked everything.

So my question is, whats causing it to drop like that and is there anything i can do to fix it without cracking it open? I dont want to send it back really unless I have to. I have until friday to send it back so am in kind of a time crunch. Any help or knowledge with this issue is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I will keep you posted on the next dicharge.

[interval]

Sorry I can't help but I have a similar problem with my 200+ cycle 6-cell. When it gets to 30mins remaining time, within a few minutes it's down to 5 minutes remaining time and then it dies
I now know that when it says 35 minutes, I actually have 5 minutes to go but it's a little annoying still.
Is that normal behaviour for a battery in this state?

sorry for the hijack

[zdriver]

Sooba - In battery maximizer, what does the battery show for design capacity vs its current capacity? What is the battery first used date?

[sooba]

the only thing i can pull up with battery maximizer is the power scheme. but i have "batterymon" and it says...

Design capacity: 71280 mWh (6480 mAh)
Full charge Capacity: 51110 mWh (4646mAH)

Dead cell(s)?

Im discharging it as im typing this and its at 78% and 3:04 left. screen is on high and im on a wireless net. When i first got it it would show almost 8 hours!! and that was last friday and 3 discharges ago.

[icantux]

Design capacity: 71280 mWh (6480 mAh)
Full charge Capacity: 51110 mWh (4646mAH)

Well that shows you right there that it's not new.... Any new battery, even with 15 charging cycles (full charge to no charge to full charge) would show a higher "full charge capacity" than what you're getting. It's either defective or it's not new (perhaps refurb?)

[sooba]

Well I know its somehow defective and there are no signs of forced opening along the seamlines so i highly doubt its a refurb. Its an OEM IBM battery.

I think ill just return it to the seller on ebay. Im thinking a couple of the cells have died because it just shot down to 4% again earlier.

[davidspalding]

Some "new" batteries might be sold as "new old stock" (NOS), check your auction listing. But the latest version of Power Manager for the T4x should show you the number of cycles on the battery. (And more, but I'm at work and can't recall.) I bought a NOS 9-cell, and some UltraBay Slim batteries, and the battery details confirmed what the sellers claimed.

Hopefully it's an honest mistake and the seller will make good.

[oddb@ll]

NOS aint very good cause batteries decay over time. Supposedly they are meant to be kept cool at 40% charge to sustain longetivity in storage but I doubt ebay sellers do this.