A couple of quick questions about the X20

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Jumphog · #1 Post by **Jumphog** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 5:19 pm

Ive had quite a few trailing edge thinkpads in the last few years, all of the 560 series, then a 600e. Ive currently got a compaq m300, which is very nice and small, and almost perfect for me apart from the touchpad and keyboard. I may have the opportunity to trade it for a 600mhz X20, but theres two things Id like to find out:

1) Is there a history of battery problems with the X20? I got stuck with duff batteries for the 600e that I had and there was no way to cheaply refurbish them - I could rebuild them with new cells but the chip in the battery pack would tell the thinkpad that there was no life left in them. I dont want to end up with a really short battery life again on an X20.

2) Does the X20 have TV out? Im guessing not, but Ive found a few places that say it has.

Thanks in advance for any info!

selvan777 · #2 Post by **selvan777** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:57 pm

I've had my X20 for about 4 years and have replaced the batt 3 times now. I get about 3 or 4 hrs of batt life. Never attempted to open any up.

There is no native TV Out on mine.

Jumphog · #3 Post by **Jumphog** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:38 pm

Thanks for the reply, just got home from swapping the M300 for the X20, hopefuly the battery will be OK in this one. Looking at the page where someone is talking about SVideo out, i think theyve just got it confused with the PS2 socket...

Unfortunately it looks as though this X20 doesnt have a network card, just a modem, off to ebay for me

selvan777: dont suppose you still have any of your old dead batteries you would like to get rid of?

selvan777 · #4 Post by **selvan777** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 10:07 pm

No, sorry, I have none but I do have a CD-ROM that slides into the Ultrabay 2000 if you like, make a reasonable offer.

If I may ask, is rebuilding these batteries something I can do easily? Care to share your know-how?

Jumphog · #5 Post by **Jumphog** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 4:30 am

selvan777 wrote:No, sorry, I have none but I do have a CD-ROM that slides into the Ultrabay 2000 if you like, make a reasonable offer.

If I may ask, is rebuilding these batteries something I can do easily? Care to share your know-how?

Thanks for the offer of the CD, but I got one with the thinkpad when I picked it up yesterday.

Rebuilding the batteries. Ive never done it for an X20, but I have for a 600 and also a compaq m300. Theres no great skill involved, just a bit of soldering. Basically, crack open the pack - usually you can break the seals around the edges by pressing a pen top hard against the seams and running it along, or perhaps twisting the whole pack. Once youve got it open theres going to be a control PCB and a bunch of cells, goto somewhere like batteryspace.com and get a complete set of replacements, theyre cheap and often higher spec than to original cells. Its really not worth just replacing one cell, you want all the cells to be the same age & quality / have the same capacity. Unsolder the old cells, stick in the new ones, tape the pack back up, give it a test - if its OK then superglue it back together.
There can be problems with certain types of bettery though, some types (see http://www3.sympatico.ca/milnoc/TP600Battery/ ) have a counter/memory in the control circuit that remembers the capacity of the battery which cannot be reset. So you can end up replacing the cells but having the thinkpad think that the pack still has the same capacity as when it had the duff cells. Im hoping the the X20 doesnt suffer from this.
Anyone know if this is the case or not?

selvan777 · #6 Post by **selvan777** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 7:40 pm

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

Do post back with info re: the memory issue on an X20 if and when you find out.

Thanks

Jumphog · #7 Post by **Jumphog** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 6:37 am

Well, it looks like the battery I got with my X20 is pretty knackered. It must have come from an office environment - its 4 years old and has a cycle count of 18! It was probably sat on someones desk with the power adapter plugged in all the time..

Ive had a quick look inside and it doesnt have the same charge controller as the 600 batteries had, which is a good sign, but it does have a microcontroller with 32k for program space so it could be doing anything. I had a lot of success with the compaq batteries I rebuilt, partially because the charge controllers in them used standard chips which I find datasheets for.

Im going to get this battery swapped for another one, but im not holding out much hope that the new one will be much better. I might go and get one of the 4000mah ones from ebay, then ill hopefully have one good one and one to experiment with.

selvan777 · #8 Post by **selvan777** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:10 am

I'm not absolutely sure so correct me if I'm wrong...anyone.

But I think the cycles on X20's happen even when plugged in 24/7. Other X series models do have a batt saving feature that allows you to prolong the wait time before a cycle takes place.

Please do keep me posted cause I'm definitely interested in rebuilding these things myself.

The last time I bought one, it was a compatible one from ebay for just $12 and it had only 5 cycles.

Jumphog · #9 Post by **Jumphog** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 5:39 am

A little update. Ive been fully charging then fully discharging the battery for the last couple of days and it seems to be having an effect. Ive turned off 'standby at 3%' in windows so I can actually get the full use of the remaining capacity. When I first got the battery it would discharge to about 85% then jump down to 4%, this took about 20 minutes, it would then run for ~20 minutes more before it powered down. Now after 4 complete dischages and overnight charges It runs until ~60%, about 40 minutes, then drops to 4% and runs for another 30 minutes.

Ive got another battery on the way, but im going to keep discharging/charging this one until it arrives. It looks to me as if the monitor circuitry in the battery is re-learning the actual capacity of the cells although it does seem to be taking a while to do it. When I have a good battery Ill take this one to bits and disconnect all the cells from the monitor pcb to see if that resets it...

ishinryu · #10 Post by **ishinryu** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:10 am

I thought only Nickel Cadmium and Nickel Metal Hydride batteries exhibited this memory effect. Lithium Ion are supposedly free of this phenomenom.

Jumphog · #11 Post by **Jumphog** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:58 am

ishinryu wrote:I thought only Nickel Cadmium and Nickel Metal Hydride batteries exhibited this memory effect. Lithium Ion are supposedly free of this phenomenom.

I dont think its the cells that are the problem, its the charge controller/monitor circuit in the battery. I think that being 4 years old and having only 18 cycles when I got it has skewed the parameters it uses to guage the available capacity.

jsf03724 · #12 Post by **jsf03724** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 2:59 pm

I've got an X20 that I picked up from a local dot-com having a firesale earlier this year. The battery which came with it was toast, only holding about 10 minutes of charge. I've picked up a newer (not new) battery from eBay, and been happier with its charge time. I usually end up near a power outlet, so the battery is less critical to me.

The X20 came with a fresh W2K image on it - they were not letting proprietary data out the door - and I have since replaced it with Fedora and then returned to W2K - so I do not have all of the X20 software packages available (no recovery partition, no recovery cd).

Curious:

How do we learn the number of cycles the battery has gone through?

Any news on rebuilding the battery? I've got this nearly dead one that I could experiment on if there's a reasonable chance of success.

Jim

selvan777 · #13 Post by **selvan777** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:30 pm

You'll need to get the "Configuration Utility" from IBM's Downloads and Drivers page, install it and run "ThinkPad Configuration", in it will be a button for "Show Battery Info" to see the cycle count (not remaining).

For rebuilding the batt, see the posts from Jumphog above and stay tuned.

Jumphog · #14 Post by **Jumphog** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:34 pm

For the software, just goto ibm.com, enter your model number into the search box (266232g for me) and then you'll get a page that links to all the drivers, docs and info for your thinkpad. Ive installed the 'battery maximiser' which gives me a 'battery information' option in thinkpad configuration. Its really useful as it show the actual charge/discharge rate, cycle count and battery voltage. Ive tuned off the suspend on low battery thing in windows, and just use the battery voltage as a guage - when it gets to 10v then Ive got about 10 minutes left.

Ive been having mixed results with getting the capacity meter to read properly, one charge only gave me 50 minutes - got to 70% then dropped off and ran for a while, but the next gave me a total runtime of 1h30m (this is with a pretty constant dischage rate of 14-15W). I have noticed that If i suspend to ram the capacity meter will track the battery much better when it come back from suspend, it will go down to 40-50% before it drops off.

My replacement battery has been shipped and should arrive next week, so provieded it works OK ill start experimenting with this battery...

jsf03724 · #15 Post by **jsf03724** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:48 pm

I've downloaded a number of the X20 apps from IBM's website, I'll have to check out the battery details later (laptop is not with me).

Curious to see how many cycles the older battery went through, and how many the newer has done. Also may try breathing new life in to the old, or better life in to the newer one.

I'll keep a watch on the forum topic for an update on the battery rebuild project.

selvan777 · #16 Post by **selvan777** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 4:02 pm

Yes, I'm also very interested in rebuilding these things myself, it'll be my first attempt.

See you around.

A couple of quick questions about the X20

A couple of quick questions about the X20

Cycle count?

thinkpad software

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