600x Battery Woes

[ka230k]

The original battery in my 600x would no longer hold a charge so I just purchased a replacement thru a dealer on ebay. I also replaced the cmos battery. Now it won't run in battery mode and It says charging when booted up in windows 2000 but it nevers moves from 68%. Any ideas?

[gator]

Is it an authentic IBM battery?

[ka230k]

Yes. The battery appears to be new old stock. It came sealed.

[ka230k]

Upon closer examination, It appears not to have the IBM logo on it. It seems I'm the victim of fraud.

[pkiff]

It says charging when booted up in windows 2000 but it nevers moves from 68%.

This is usually a sign that one or more of the internal cells is dead, or a connection from one cell to the next inside has become broken somehow.

There are lots of sources for 600 series replacement batteries on eBay, and most of them do not ship original IBM batteries. If you've received one that doesn't charge to 100%, then most reputable eBay sellers will simply replace it for you. Even reputable eBay sellers will sometimes send out a bad battery since they do not normally charge the battery up for you before shipping it, so I would give your seller a chance to resolve the issue with a replacement unless you really don't want a non-IBM battery. The "higher capacity" batteries that are available on eBay are ONLY available in non-IBM packages, since IBM never made a high capacity battery for the 600X.

I've had good experiences buying high capacity non-IBM batteries from eBay sellers: portablecomponents and powergears (Eagle Imports), but YMMV.

One note of caution. If you have a SpeedStep 600X machine, then I would recommend NOT buying a non-IBM battery, but rather finding an original one, or (my preference) getting your original battery refilled with new, higher capacity cells. It seems that in order to achieve maximum speed on a SpeedStep 600X machine, you need a good battery with the original IBM charging circuits inside, so a non-IBM battery will actually limit the perforance of a SpeedStep 600X machine: see 600X, SpeedStep and batteries.

Good luck,

Phil.

[gator]

This is usually a sign that one or more of the internal cells is dead, or a connection from one cell to the next inside has become broken somehow.

Just came to write exactly this.

You can try batteryrefill.com, they have a decent reputation and a reasonable turnaround time. I have not sent any batteries to them, so this info is based on what I read on the forum only. One thing to keep in mind though, all posts that I read about them say that the batteries don't look good physically when they come back after refilling (functionally they are ok). Apparently these people pry open the battery pack and when they put it back together they use glue and it shows.

[ka230k]

Thanks. I contacted the seller and am hoping for the best.