battery hotswapping without ultrabay battery?

[precip9]

The power manager utility pull up menu lists a "swap battery" function. I had a Compal laptop from 2001 that had this as well. I assume this puts the CPU in a halt state, while power to ram is bridged by the yellow lithium chloride cell attached to the motherboard.

With an ultrabay battery installed, it's easy to believe it works. My questions relate to when there isn't one.

Shy of Murphy's law, I've never tried this. I feel good when a machine successfully sleeps and wakes up. Has anyone used this routinely? Would an aged lithium chloride cell from an X61 or a W500 have enough juice? How much holdover time is there? Do USB and Bluetooth connections survive a swap?

[twistero]

On modern ThinkPads I believe the "swap battery" function simply puts the machine in hibernation.

[rkawakami]

I believe any laptop that uses a "lithium chloride" battery would be almost two decades old. Systems prior to the 600-series would have used a fairly large cylindrical battery as the "standby" supply; size is in the order of a lithium CR123 camera battery or 1/2 AA. Hibernation would be the "modern" way to swap batteries while allowing the system to resume were it left off.

Also, if by "hotswapping" you mean removing/replacing the main battery while the system is powered by an AC adapter and it's running, then yes, this should work. It's probably not recommended but I've done this many times with only one instance of a problem - I think I blew out a fuse or circuit inside the battery pack as it refused to charge afterwards.

[precip9]

Edit. I checked lithium chloride form factors, and I'm probably wrong. It's likely just a lithium metal coin cell. But then what is the "swap battery" function?

The battery attached to the motherboard, that looks like a large disk capacitor,looks like a rechargeable lithium chloride cell. These batteries are still manufactured. They store more energy than a supercapacitor, and the chemistry is resistant to overcharging, so they can be continuously connected to a constant voltage source.

I assumed that the battery can be hotswapped if an AC adapter is connected. However, this should not require any software accommodation.The function I refer to appears in the power manager "drop up" menu.

[rkawakami]

The function I refer to appears in the power manager "drop up" menu.

What system and what version of Power Manager are we talking about?

[theterminator93]

The "remove and replace battery" option is just a software redundancy, like the ability to set up power plans (You can do the same thing in the OS). All it does is hibernate the system and is merely an alternate name/path to do the same thing. I've hot swapped/R&R'd hundreds of batteries in hundreds of systems while AC powered, never having experienced any ill effects either.