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X200 -> X201 upgrade and battery issues

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:16 pm
by htsmi
Hi all,

Been a long time lurker on this forum. I recently had the internal LAN on my trusty X200 die so I took the opportunity to upgrade the motherboard to an X201 i5-540M from ebay. The only problem is that since the replacement, the battery will not charge. In fact when the power adapter is connected, the battery LED goes out and Windows says battery not found. When I unplug the power adapter the battery LED comes back on and it runs normally on battery power.

I tested again with the X200 board and it charges the battery and the LEDs and OS level notifications work properly.

The battery is an aftermarket one so maybe that is related. Unfortunately I discarded the previous one because its capacity was shot, and I also don't have a spare power adapter.

The most probable case seems to be that the new board has a bad charging circuit, but I'd like to know if anyone has encountered anything similar so I can narrow the problem down better. Specifically, is there anything different about the X201 that would reject an aftermarket battery that the X200 accepts?

Re: X200 -> X201 upgrade and battery issues

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:58 am
by htsmi
Update: it was the power adapter. I have re-soldered the end a few times due to broken wires and I probably messed something up with the resistor or diode in there. Curiously, it works fine when charging through the docking station but not when plugged into the laptop. I ordered a replacement power adapter and everything now works like it should.