600e suddenly a brick

[tombrander]

I've had a 600e with battery problems for awile. The battery started lasting only 5 minutes from full charge, so I had to keep it plugged in via adaptor all the time, on standby when I wasn't using it.

I knocked it out a month ago and didn't notice it. I tried bringing it back from standby and it wouldn't recover (screen was powered with just a blinking cursor). I'm used to this if I leave it on too long without use, so I tried to reboot. Wouldn't respond. I held the power button until it finally turned off. Refused to start again. Nothing -- no fan/hd startup, no electrical pitch.

Let it charge all night from beige light to green, still nothing. I took out the battery and it actually did start up. 3-digit error codes, a wierd error screen with a flying bird mouse cursor, and a big O -> | error screen. At last got into a low-res window screen and got all my files off, but that seems to be it. I can no longer get a response.

Can anyone help me out? Even without the battery I should be able to run this thing, right? I had no problems of this magnitude before this.

Would a new battery help? I see some on ebay and the ASM/FRU numbers match, but the voltage and amh do not. Thanks in advance.

[tombrander]

Aw, crap. I specifically looked back like 5 pages for a similar issue so I wouldn't waste anyone's time, then I finally look at the newest post after mine and its about the same issue -- dead cmos battery. I guess I'd better work on that first. Sorry!

[rkawakami]

First off, welcome!

<snip>... on standby when I wasn't using it.

Maybe hibernate mode will work better for you. It does take some extra time for the laptop to enter and then exit hibernation, as opposed to standby, but from my point of view it is safer. Standby keeps the operating system/programs loaded in memory which requires constant power to maintain. Any interruption in power can result in strange operation. If you hibernate, a snapshot of the memory contents is written to the disk and then the laptop completely shuts down. If you wish to continue using standby mode I believe that the 600E offers a Redi-Safe (?) option. This option writes the hibernation file but keeps the system in standby mode.

3-digit error codes, a wierd error screen with a flying bird mouse cursor, and a big O -> | error screen.

That's the Easy Setup (aka BIOS) screen.

At last got into a low-res window screen and got all my files off, but that seems to be it.

Sounds like that was Windows Safe Mode. Since the laptop was not properly shut down beforehand Windows may have defaulted to this mode or you selected it via the boot menu.

I can no longer get a response.

So you are still having problems with getting the 600E to respond to the power switch?

Even without the battery I should be able to run this thing, right?

Yes, you should be able to operate the laptop without any battery installed. This goes for the CMOS battery as well but you will continue to get errors on boot (161, 163, 173 and/or 192).

Would a new battery help? I see some on ebay and the ASM/FRU numbers match, but the voltage and amh do not.

If you can guarantee that your laptop will always have power supplied by the AC adapter, then you don't really need any battery. But seeing how you accidently knocked out the power last month, it's probably better that you have one . The voltage of the replacement battery should be 10.8v if it is a lithium ion (Li-Ion) one. Nicads, if available, may be slightly higher or lower, can't remember. The mAh rating is an indication on how much power it can supply over time. A higher number is better. I believe that the original IBM batteries were around 3200 or 3600mAh. There are now many suppliers who are selling 4400mAh packs. As battery technology has improved over the years, the mAh rating keeps going up. Either that, it's a marketing ploy designed to keep you spending money on newer and better (?) stuff.

[tombrander]

Thanks for all your tips. I'll definitely use hibernate in the future if that's easier, and see if the battery still holds a 5min charge (good enough for me, I just don't want it to die if I yank the plug while I'm using it)

As for it not working at all, I am able to get it on sporadically again. No more bios errors, it goes straight into "safe mode" after a long boot. But I just picked up a cmos battery and external floppy disk drive for 10 bucks on ebay, so I'll try those out and see. (floppy disk got stuck while I was moving files so I took the drive apart. The metal was thinner than I thought and I kinda mangled it :O)

Dunno about the battery, though. 50 bucks is kinda expensive, at least halfway to a better laptop entirely.

[tombrander]

Replacing the cmos battery worked like a charm. I have only one problem -- that all fonts in windows are smudged and very lo-res (like it's running in safe mode). This is after I got the machine to boot normally.

Control panel shows no problem with the video card, display is set to 24-bit, and the resolution is fine in dos programs. Anyone ever heard of something like this?

[pkiff]

Not clear what OS you are running your DOS programs under. But have you tried Fn + F8? This controls hardware-based screen expansion and if you are running DOS natively then you are actually getting 640x480 display resolution expanded up to your 1024x768 LCD size.

If you are running XP, then you can try enabling or tweaking ClearType if you haven't already (Control Panel -> Display -> Appearance -> Effects -> Use the following method to display screen fonts...ClearType.

Are you sure you've got your screen resolution set to 1024x768?

Phil.

[tombrander]

I'd always wondered why the display previously shifted between "widescreen" and not going from 1024/768 to 800/600 (I prefer the latter). Thanks, that was the problem. Wish I could repay everyone on this forum for helping me out -- saved me a ton of time.