6-cell Lenovo Battery dead but individual cells at 3.81v

[jaspen-meyer]

I have a number of 6-cell packs which say, "Trademark of Lenovo. Manufactured for Lenovo. Made in China.
TIS 2217-2548 NOM 10.8v 5.2 Ah". Inside are 6 pink 1865 cells.

When I put the pack in a T400 with an adapter attached the battery light flashes at a rate of about 2.5x/sec and the cells do not charge.

I assume the circuit board inside the pack is doing something stupid.

Why won't the cells charge?

[axur-delmeria]

Have you installed Power Manager? What does "Battery Information" say?

[jaspen-meyer]

Have you installed Power Manager? What does "Battery Information" say?

No, I haven't installed 'Power Manager'.
It looks like a windows-only program.
I'd be startled if this has anything to do with the operating system, but, for what it's worth, the machines are running Linux.

I see https://support.lenovo.com/cz/cs/documents/ht003431, a firmware update for windows which includes the 'Battery Information' tab.

I took one of the packs apart and connected a charged the cells with a li-ion charger.
The cells are now each at 3.95-4.1V but 'acpi -V' outputs:

Code: Select all

Battery 0: Unknown, 0%
Battery 0: design capacity 4701 mAh, last full capacity 2715 mAh = 57%
Adapter 0: on-line

[jaspen-meyer]

Lenovo manufactured sold batteries with firmware installed in them to artificially shorten the life of the battery - causing the battery to no longer accept a charge when it was still able to accept a charge.

http://support.lenovo.com/cz/cs/downloads/ds001322
https://support.lenovo.com/cz/cs/documents/ht101432

After just a little digging the list of affected models is (at least):

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ThinkPad Edge 11
ThinkPad Edge 13 (Machine types: 0196, 0197, 0492)
ThinkPad Edge 14, 15
ThinkPad Edge E10
ThinkPad Edge E30 (Machine types: 0196, 0197, 0492)
ThinkPad Edge E40, E50
ThinkPad Edge E120, E125, E130, E135
ThinkPad Edge E220s
ThinkPad Edge E320, E325, E330, E335
ThinkPad Edge E420, E420s, E425
ThinkPad Edge E520, E525, L330
ThinkPad 11e (Type 20D9, 20DA)
ThinkPad L410, L412, L420, L421, L430
ThinkPad L510, L512, L520, L530
ThinkPad SL410
ThinkPad SL510
ThinkPad T410, T410i, T420, T420i, T420s, T420si, T430, T430i, T430s, T430si
ThinkPad T510, T510i, T520, T520i, T530, T530i
ThinkPad W510, W520, W530
ThinkPad X1
ThinkPad X100e, X120e, X121e, X130e, X131e
ThinkPad X220, X220i, X220 Tablet, X220i Tablet, X230, X230i, X230 Tablet, X230i Tablet
ThinkPad Yoga 11e (Type 20D9, 20DA)
IdeaPad Z400, Z500, P500

Was there a similar tactic used with the firmware for the T400? Where is the firmware?

Here's more information about the battery, from /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0

Code: Select all

alarm:
1621000

capacity:
0

capacity_level:
Critical

cycle_count:
0

device:

energy_full:
32430000

energy_full_design:
56160000

energy_now:
0

manufacturer:
LGC

model_name:
42T4653

power:

power_now:
0

present:
1

serial_number:
20406

status:
Unknown

subsystem:

technology:
Li-ion

type:
Battery

uevent:
POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0
POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Unknown
POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1
POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion
POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11936000
POWER_SUPPLY_POWER_NOW=0
POWER_SUPPLY_ENERGY_FULL_DESIGN=56160000
POWER_SUPPLY_ENERGY_FULL=32430000
POWER_SUPPLY_ENERGY_NOW=0
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY=0
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY_LEVEL=Critical
POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=42T4653
POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=LGC
POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER=20406

voltage_min_design:
10800000

voltage_now:
11936000

[axur-delmeria]

Ah, I see you're running linux.

Was that battery left discharged (0%) for more than a day, or was left fully charged and unused for a month or so?

[jaspen-meyer]

Yes, it was left unused for more than a month.

I'm not sure whether it was left with a "charge of 0%", as it depends how you're defining 0%.
The cells themselves had charges of 3.81V.

[axur-delmeria]

To be completely honest, I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to provide a definite, "most probably correct" answer, but here's what I think:

1. Li-ion batteries do self-discharge. It might have over-discharged and tripped a protection circuit on the battery's built-in charge controller.
2. random data corruption on the battery's charge controller's memory/firmware/NVRAM, due to over-discharge or maybe something else entirely.

In both cases, it might be possible to reprogram the charge controller to fix the issue. However, I don't know how to do it.