T42 Battery wont charge after spill on keyboard

[lynnja]

I resurected my T42 after a spill on the keyboard with help from this forum. The battery is no longer charging and just wondering what could be causing this.

[rkawakami]

Two possibilities that I can see (assuming that the battery was charging correctly before the spill:

- there's still some contamination on the motherboard from the spill which is preventing the battery charging circuit to operate properly
- there's some actual damage to one or more of the components on the motherboard

I'm not familiar enough with the T42 motherboards to say exactly where to look. Battery charging controllers are made by several manufacturers; Maxim has a series of MAXnnn ICs and Analog Devices has ADPnnnn parts ("nnn" are numbers). Generally located on the motherboard near the battery terminals and would likely have an inductor (black rectangular block or circular drum) nearby as well. There's a chance that a fuse has blown out which would simplify the repair. Well, at least it's easier to replace a surface mounted fuse than a 24 pin IC .

[Harryc]

One more possibility is that the charging circuitry in the battery itself is defective. I have seen water spills kill batteries on T6X models, so I suppose it's also possible on T4X models as well.