T30 - wont run on battery power

[skystyler]

Hi Guys

My daughter spilt a big glass of coke all over her T30 several months ago. I thought that was the end of it, but miraculously it still works fine in every aspect bar one. It wont use the battery. I have changed the battery to no avail. The battery light flashes whenever a battery is installed as if the battery has no charge. I have another T30 that wont post that I can use for spares. Is there anything I can rip off the dead one to fix this problem?

cheers
Luke

[rkawakami]

It is difficult to say exactly what you should remove/replace on your system in order to get it to work. About the best advice I can give would be to remove the motherboard and completely clean the area around the battery contacts (as that is usually where the battery circuitry is located). Isopropyl alcohol should be able to clean up any remaining traces of the liquid spill that could be causing a problem. Clean/inspect the area around the battery contacts, up to about two inches away. While you are doing that, look for some components like this:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/t23_ ... _fuses.jpg

This is from a T23 but similar parts are probably used in the T30. Since you say that the battery is not being charged and the system cannot run with the battery alone, then that seems to point to a fuse. I've circled two fuses that are on the T23 motherboard and which also may be used on the T30. The bigger of the two, marked with LF10A on top, is the main fuse for the battery. To the upper left of that fuse, there's an "F12" printed on the motherboard which identifies that fuse. You can test to see if it is still good by using an ohmmeter (multimeter). Putting the test leads of the ohmmeter across the metal end caps of the fuse should result in a measurement of 0 ohms. Anything more than that means the fuse has blown. There is a smaller fuse, labeled "F9" next it it but I believe that it may only control charging of the battery.

If you don't want to remove the entire motherboard from the base, you may be able to access this portion of the T30 motherboard by simply removing the keyboard and keyboard bezel. Since the T23 and T30 systems are very similar in this area (a battery for the T30 can be used in the T23), the layout of the motherboards should be about the same.

[evening_hunger]

Hate to excavate zombie threads, but I'm just here to give credit where it's due and confirm the accuracy of the above post. So, yes in 2022 I have worked on a T30 that had the very same issues/symptoms. Thanks to the post of rkawakami, I was able to rule out the mobo being broken (the aforementioned fuses were not blown). Thanks to this I concentrated on the battery pack itself and it looks as if had helped.

And to increase the "googleabiility" of this thread (guess how I found it): yes the T30 has both F12 and F9 fuses, they're positioned slightly differently than in the T23 photo, but are trivial to find and measure.