R40 Problem

[icamn]

I seem to have an issue with my IBM R40. I bought this notebook from a company that had used it before for about $200 Cdn. The company is respectable, and since its used they don't provide any sort of warranty. The problem of the R40 is that instead of showing the MTM as 2722-L2U which is what the model is in the back of the machine, it just says TP-1P__ . I don't understand this. The battery since to be an issue as well it only seems to want to hold a 25.7WHr charge instead of the intended 57.4WHr. I have tried reconditioning and it doesn't seem to charge a 100%. I am just wondering about this problem because its a good laptop but these issues tend to be really annoying. I cannot have the computer on for more then 20min before it dies, the MeteGauge shows 75% and the amber battery light is flashing.

I have tried updating the Embedded Controller which is now version 1.14 and the bios which is now 1.30. Nothing seems to change.

[Terrahawk]

As far as I am aware, a flashing orange battery indicator means that the battery is not working properly and should be replaced.

[kajencik]

i wouldn´t care about the different description ID, if the lenovo update works, it may be related to changing a system board lately or someting like this, but this I dont know.

Now for the battery: The 25 Whr capacity is allright, only brand new battery would have the 57 Whr (or even more) capacity, by the time it's used the capacity drops. I had already 3 batteries for my r40, two of them are still usefull. The one died totally after it has only about 7 Whr capacity left.

The others I have have 25 Wh and 40 Wh capacities, and are aproximately the same age, (about 4 years now). I recently managed to increase their capacity above 40 Wh, but then I drained the battery which is now 25 out. Here is procedure I used and why I think it worked:

When the batteries are aging, normal reconditioning obviously dont work. I fully charged the computer and then put in the standby and disconnected the power and the let it be and before this i turned off any power saving setting, especially that the computer wouldnt hibernate itself when on low battery. Than I left it complete drain the battery till the computer powered off itself even in the standby mode, and that quite raised the capacity in both of the batteries (altough maybe only for some time on one of them). I think the low power consumption in standby mode let the battery to discharge gently and it's lead to increasing capacity. (but maybe not to increase capacity, just fool the control chip a bit - but this I'm really only quessing)

I also heard that there is some DOS program for reconditioning the battery, but I dont know exactly

And what reconditioning did you try? Did the percetnage of the battery dropped suddenly? (for example from 60% to 5% in 5 seconds) With these old batteries you have to let the laptop completely die out of power. Don't let it shoutdown when windows wants, turn off the power management and let it go as long as it does a hard power off, meaning that there is too low charge in the battery and the control circuits disconnects the power, this is what you need, get the voltage as low as it can go without bricking the battery, and this can't be done with normal windows power saving settings.

And why does the battery behave so badly, especially the older ones? I think this is because the battery cells have longer lifetime than lenovo wants because instead of buying a new battery you would just reconditioned it, so the laptop's battery management isn't fully using the cells potencial and acting quite badly with the older ones, but this is only my opinion

It should be also said, that except the laptops charging and battery management circuitis and software, also the battery itself has a chip to prevent full discharge and such, it's called "the intelligent battery" or someting similar.

Uff, quite long I hope you'll understand this, and dont hesitate to ask anything

[kajencik]

And to the battery LED - the flashing orange means that the battery is at low percerntage, it doesn't say anything about battery health, which could be found in the lenovo control center - there are 3 states green - good, orange - souhld be replaced, red - died, or replacing is really recommended) (I managed it from the orange to the green with the "standby reconditioning"