Thinkpads Forum

hello all

working on reviving my 600X into a fully mobile notebook again. two questions:

- anyone have a proven source for new batteries on these?
- with a new battery, what can one reasonably expect as far as battery life?

thanks as always

alfio

anyone still run these one batteries? thanks

I sourced one from eBay a year ago and had a good experience with it so far.

The vendor no longer has them, but other vendors do on eBay, but the quality is all over the place from what I've read.

It seems to be a gamble more or less, just don't spend too much $ on it and hope for the best. Sorry if this seems too vague.

There are also some site that will open up the old one and replace the cells, but again YMMV with this route.

I bought a 3rd party battery a few years ago for my 600, and get between 1.5-2 hours on a full charge, less if I do something strenuous (I'd barely make 45 mins if I was watching a DVD off the optical drive or even from an ISO on the hard drive). It doesn't seem like it's lost too much of its oomph, but between the age and the fact that it's currently still running Windows 98SE, I can't speak to how much "wear" it's taken.

I've not used it too much of late, what with a T61p in my stable now, but as it's the only portable computer I have that has a serial port, it's still my choice when I want to connect to my VW and poke around in the onboard computers.

Besides eBay, broaden your search a little (try googling for "thinkpad 600 battery") - you might find a good source that way too.

Good luck.

I've used batteryrefill.com for my 600x battery and have had no
issues with it. No connection, just a happy customer.

any possibilities of DIY battery refill on something like this?

I bought one off ebay. I get about an hour. All in all i think thats a bit below average. I'd love to get two hours.

alfio wrote:any possibilities of DIY battery refill on something like this?

There are several posts throughout the forum, where people have tried the DIY battery refill method, on various machines. It works for some, but it is dangerous, and depending on your source for replacement cells, not necessarily cheaper than eBay...

i repacked both of my original IBM 600X batteries with cells from an HP dv6000 12-cell battery

when i first did it, i could get about 2-2.5 hours each, with a little bit of USB wireless here and there. they each started getting shorter and shorter run times, down to about an hour or so. i had done a poor solder job in one of them and had to take it apart and redo the main positive lead, and after i reassembled it i got my 2.5 hours back. guess i must have reset the battery chip or something. did this to the other pack, just undid the + lead and then reattached it and that one got its life back too. keep in mind these were both repacked at around the same time.

that was with a 650MHz SpeedStep 600X. i have since upgraded to an 850MHz MMC-2.

i also have an original IBM UltraBay battery. if you are not running a DVD or a 2nd Hard Drive Adapter, i highly recommend getting one of these if you see one. i got mine on eBay for $22 shipped, but it was the only one listed.

i also ran one of these packs in a 600E for a while and battery life seemed to be a bit closer to 3 hours but i wasn't really paying attention.