New battery for 600X. Not sure if it's good. Pls help.

[zawmoo]

Hi,

I just bought a battery on ebay and received it 3 days ago.

Anyway, I plugged it in. It charged to 99% (not 100%) within 2 hours. And it just stopped at 99%. Then, I just use it for 2+ hours. Drained it down to about 5%. My computer wouldn't come out from standby anymore. So, I plugged it back in. After it charges back to 75%, it stopped completely without charging any further. So, I drained it again and noticed from 75% -> 5% battery, it lasted about 2.5 hrs. I'd say pretty good. But, not charging to 100% keeps bugging me.

Doubting I got a bad battery, I ran the battery check utility from IBM (on a diskette), all it told me was, it is in good condition for its age!

Can any body who have experience with batteries tell me, if my battery is normal? Are there any utilities that can test the battery more thoroughly? I'm running Windows 2000 Pro w/ SP4. I have installed the IBM battery maximizer and all it does is tell me I have an IBM battery, its remaining charge, whether it is charging. That's it. I don't see the charge cycle diagnosis stuffs people are talking about in the forums. Am I missing something?

I do have about 80 days to figure out if my battery is good or bad.

Please help. TIA.

[dsigma6]

if it works, i wouldnt complain. whether or not you want to send it back is your own issue, but it works either way. the numbers are nice to have, but once you know the battery youll know how long you can run it. its not unusual for the % to be off.

power manager is one program that people get the battery cycle count from, but it doesnt run on your machine- at least it didnt when i tried it on my 600e. it works on most newer ones.

[zawmoo]

Thank you for the fast reply. I just notice a few more pieces of information regarding my battery.

It absolutely stop charging at 75% every time. The tray icon is immediately "on AC power" once it gets there. The battery light is solid green.

I just checked in Battery Information of MobilMeter.

Charge remaning: 35595 wMah
Capacity: 44xxx wMah
Wear level: 0%

Somebody on the net suggested that the battery maxiser utility is doing the cut-off. At any rate, I'll uninstall and see if it'll charge to more than 90%.

At any rate, I'm happy that wear level shows 0%. It's a relief.

[Rob Mayercik]

Dang, that's a nice deal for a 600-series battery - I paid about $60 for a 3600mAh pack about a year or two ago. If these guys are still around when this one dies, I'm going to get one of these...

Anyhow, is it possible that the battery is fully charged, but that either the "smart circuit" in the pack or Maximiser itself is not properly handling the actual capacity right?

Original 600-series batteries were rated at 3200mAh, if memory serves, and I don't know if IBM ever offered a pack of this capacity. 3200 out of 4460 is (approximately) 75%.

You said the first charge lasted over 2 hours, and that you're still getting similar run times even though Maximiser appears to be cutting off the charge at 75%. It may be that the smart circuit in the battery is correctly reporting full charge, but with the original capacity number (assuming this is an OEM pack rebuilt with new cells - how's the build quality of this thing? Anything to indicate it's a rebuilt pack?). It may be that the battery's smart circuit is doing some sort of rescaling adaptation to hande the higher-capacity cells, and Maximiser may be referencing a lookup table to convert that capacity number to mAh.

I don't think you're the only one running a pack of this capacity in a 600 around here, hopefully one of them will chime in here with their experience. Something knocking about in my head suggests that you may be seeing the typical run time for a 4400mAh pack, but I'll defer to someone with practical experience (that's your cue, whoever you are!).

Have you considered contacting the vendor and asking them whether they would consider this a problem? Their auction page does indicate that they're happy to answer questions about their product. If they've tested one of this pack type, they may have seen this and know what's going on "under the hood".

All that aside, 2.5 hours run time is nothing to sneeze at - I'd wager it's far better than many folks are doing.

Rob

[dsigma6]

i bought a new aftermarket battery like yours and it charges to 99%, never to 100. it lasts about 2.5 hours, usually with the screen slightly dimmed. i believe i paid $40 shipped.

[zawmoo]

Thank you Rob. What you said is true. 3500mah is about 75% of 44mah. So, if it is original battery (I think 3600mah) it is considered full.

I think I've got an idea of why it is only charging to 75%. I was using the BIOS version ITET48WW when I first got the battery. It charged to 99%. That was the first charge BEFORE BIOS update.

After it is charged, I upgraded my BIOS to ITET55WW. Since then it only charged to 75% ever since. So, IBM probably put a limit on newer BIOS. Otherwise, I have no explanation for this.

So, I'll try to DOWNGRADE the BIOS and see if it charges to 99% again. I have no problem with my runtime nor 99% charge. But, I do have a problem with stopping at only 75% charge. Seems like the extra battery juice has gone to waste. I'll report back what I find!

----
On a side note, I'm a squeezer who likes to get every juice out of my 600X. With a 7200RPM drive I've just got from Brent & 512MB on the way, I hope my 600X will get me 1 more year. Even so, it is hard. I have to use 2 earlier versions of development software such as W2K Pro, Dreamweaver 4, Illustrator 9, Photoshop 6. They run bearable. If I have gone with latest Dreamweaver 8, Photoshop CS2, I think my laptop will bearly move.

[dsigma6]

xp would fly on that 600x with a 7200rpm and 512mb of ram.

[JHEM]

xp would fly on that 600x with a 7200rpm and 512mb of ram.

Not really Dan. W2K is the "sweet" spot for the 600X machines, even on my upgraded 850MHz machine with a 7K60HD and 576MB RAM.

I've had both on that old machine and W2K beat XP in all the tests I ran, even though I had XP pared down.

Regards,

James

[dsigma6]

it seemed likely..

i was basing that on the fact that i run xp pro on my 366mhz 600e w/350mb ram and on my 366mhz 570 w/192 mb of ram, both with 4200rpm drives.

it runs fine on them with the visualization off, and ive noticed no performance loss whatsoever on the 600 (because it has enough ram).

it seemed like a faster processor, a faster hd, and more ram would certainly improve things. i don't know anything about the 600x video memory.

[zawmoo]

Ok.

After I've downgraded back to ITET48WW BIOS, right after reboot, the windows utility is saying the battery is 99% charged.

In the mobile meter, battery information, the numbers now have changed some.

Remaining wattage: 35565 mWh
Fully charged capacity: 35605 mWh
Designed capacity: 47520 mWh
Wear level: 25%

Lesson learned

So, even though the reported percentage in Windows have changed some (depending on BIOS version), the remaining wattage in mobile meter is about the same. Basically, there is no way to charge a 4400 mah battery to full capacity. The most it'll go is up to 99% of the oem designed 3600 mah battery. Must be IBM's design.

-----
dsigma6

As far as XP flying, I think it is relative. My desktop is Windows XP Pro, 1.4GHZ P4 w/ 640 MB (with slow PC133 RAM), 7200RPM HD. If I run XP on my 600X, it seems slow by comparison (may be about 60%-70% of my desktop). By running W2K, I have managed to keep both of them about the same performance level. I think my usage is on the heavy side. Web development packages like Photoshop & dreamweaver will slow down computers to a crawl. Later versions are worse.

With W2K, AntiVir and small clipboard extender, my base memory usage after bootup is about 90MB. My XP is about 140MB. Both tuned to the max with all possible services turned off. So, it least XP uses about 50MB more which I didn't have much before upgrade. Mine only had 320MB RAM initially.

The only thing I miss about XP on my laptop is the clear type (easier to read).

[pkiff]

Basically, there is no way to charge a 4400 mah battery to full capacity. The most it'll go is up to 99% of the oem designed 3600 mah battery. Must be IBM's design.

No, no. That's not true. You have a specific problem with a specific battery from a specific vendor.

I have an original IBM OEM battery (3200mAH - these preceded the 3600mAH versions), an aftermarket cloned battery (3600mAH), and a rebuilt IBM battery with higher capacity cells replacing the originals (4400mAH). All of these charge up to 100% in both of my 600X's. The 4400mAH battery provides about 2.5 hours under standard strain for me, with PCMCIA WiFi connected. It is enough juice to watch an average length DVD (1.5 hours), but barely, since that seems to drain power quite a bit. I think I could squeeze 3 hours out of it if I tried harder to conserve power.

I have had an aftermarket clone battery with a higher capacity than the original charge only up to 99% in my 770ED, but that did not affect the actual run-time. I strongly doubt that IBM would have inserted something in the BIOS to hamper charging of higher capacity batteries, since they might have had plans to create one themselves. It is normal, however, for clone batteries to use different circuits than the original OEM batteries, and it is quite possible for these to behave differently or to display inaccurate information about charge levels.

Alternatively, maybe MobileMeter is incorrect. The 600 series does not have perfect support for ACPI and information such as "wear level" may not be accurate as a result.

Lastly, your symptoms (sometimes 75%, sometimes 99%) could indicate a failing/failed cell in the battery. If it repeatedly is unable to charge beyond 75%, regardless of what BIOS you are using, then I would send it back to the vendor and request a replacement/refund.

Phil.