T23 battery doesn't charge (new battery, same issue)

[thomanski]

Hi there,

I have a T23 which I bought about a year ago on ebay, It has worked fine until about a week ago. The type is not recognised by IBM/Lenovo, it states TT38-MUK. The charger it came with is an original IBM one, whether it is exactly the one needed for a T23 I can't tell, but it did work well for about a year and the computer still runs on it, it just doesn't recharge.

I assumed the problem was with the battery rather than the charger or laptop and bought a new battery, again from ebay, non-original.

When the battery came the laptop showed a charge of 77% on it and I was quite excited to work with it for 2h:20min before it reached 7% and demanded a recharge. So I connected the charger, but the problem remained the same: The computer works when on the charger, but the battery doesn't get recharged at all.

Shortly after connecting the charger the battery LED turns green for a few seconds, then it apparently recognises its mistake and turns orange. Whether the laptop is switched on or off doesn't make the slightest difference.

The Lenovo support site at http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 1038#notch isn't very helpful. It suggests a few obvious things, and concludes that if the machine works when just on the charger then the battery will need to be serviced. As I'm experiencing the same issues with a new battery that can't quite be the case.

I'd be most grateful for any help with this, including pointers to good and affordable repair outlets in either London, UK or Hamburg, Germany.

Happy New Year everybody,
Thomas

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com! Sorry for the slight delay in responding to your post... been celebrating the New Year with the family!

The charger it came with is an original IBM one, whether it is exactly the one needed for a T23 I can't tell, but it did work well for about a year and the computer still runs on it, it just doesn't recharge.

The AC adapter should be a 72 watt model (16V 4.5A). While it is possible to run the T23 with a 54 watt version (16V 3.36A), it is not recommended. However, this in no way should affect the charging of the battery. I've been able to run (and charge) a T23 with a 54w supply.

I assumed the problem was with the battery rather than the charger or laptop and bought a new battery, again from ebay, non-original.

It might be possible that the battery you are using does not have the correct circuit inside of it that reports the battery's status back to the computer. Do you have a make and model number?

Shortly after connecting the charger the battery LED turns green for a few seconds, then it apparently recognises its mistake and turns orange.

An orange light while the laptop is plugged into the mains indicates that the battery charge is low. It should also indicate that the battery is being charged. If you see a blinking orange light then that usually means a battery that can't be charged.

I suppose that it's possible that the battery could be the problem. There is also a chance that something on the motherboard is causing the lack of battery charging (defective charging circuit).

Since I'm on the other side of the "pond" from you, I don't have any information about repair shops local to you.

[vlyne]

Sorry for the slight delay in responding to your post... been celebrating the New Year with the family!

Welcome back Ray! Hope you had a great New Year celebration!

As for thomanski's T23, the symptoms seem like a classic case of a blown main fuse. I would take the keyboard off and check out the main fuses.
Cheers

[roncoinc]

I bought an aftermarket battery from ebay for another brand laptop and had problems with it similar..my bad battery would be recognized but new one would "fall out" or be not seen shortly after inserting.therefore no charge..i sent it back and the new one worked fine..after the cost of the battery and cost of shipping it back for a few more dollars i could have used the batery rebuilding company that has been mentioned on this forum before...
find another thinkpad that takes same battery and check it out..even if you have to go to a used laptop store,make up a good story and ask nicely if they would put it in one of thier machines to see if it charges..
good luck.

[thomanski]

Many thanks for the quick replies, folks!

Sounds like there's a ray of hope. The machine is still in Hamburg while I've arrived in London, so I'll have to investigate this further during the weekend. I'll take the charger for my T43 with me (which is 16V and 4.5A) to give that a go.

I assumed the problem was with the battery rather than the charger or laptop and bought a new battery, again from ebay, non-original.

It might be possible that the battery you are using does not have the correct circuit inside of it that reports the battery's status back to the computer. Do you have a make and model number?

I'll have a look for make and model of the battery when in Germany. It's explicitly sold as being T23-compatible.

An orange light while the laptop is plugged into the mains indicates that the battery charge is low. It should also indicate that the battery is being charged. If you see a blinking orange light then that usually means a battery that can't be charged.

That's interesting. I'm pretty sure it wasn't blinking, it just turned orange, but never got anywhere with the recharging.

As for thomanski's T23, the symptoms seem like a classic case of a blown main fuse. I would take the keyboard off and check out the main fuses.

Thanks, I'll definitely check. Thanks to one of Ray's earlier posts I now know what they look like: http://www.rkawakami.net/ibm_t2x/main_fuses.jpg

Any ideas how the electronically challenged would find out if it's blown and where to get a replacement?

I bought an aftermarket battery from ebay for another brand laptop and had problems with it similar..my bad battery would be recognized but new one would "fall out" or be not seen shortly after inserting.therefore no charge.

Frankly, I still doubt it's the battery as the symptoms are the same for the old (which worked well until recently) and new one. If I can get hold of another ThinkPad T2x (for which the battery's supposed to work) I'll definitely try it in there.

Again, many thanks for all your help!

[rkawakami]

Thanks, I'll definitely check. Thanks to one of Ray's earlier posts I now know what they look like: http://www.rkawakami.net/ibm_t2x/main_fuses.jpg

Any ideas how the electronically challenged would find out if it's blown and where to get a replacement?

That picture only shows two of the many (over a dozen?) fuses on the T23 motherboard. Those particular ones protect the main battery. There are similar ones near the battery terminals in the Ultrabay and a couple of more right next to the connector that the DC power jack plugs into.

A simple multimeter that measures resistance (ohms) is all that is required to check a fuse. With power removed from the system, put the meter into the lowest ohms range and place the leads across the fuse. You should read 0 ohms for a good fuse and nothing (infinite) ohms for a bad fuse. That's the easy part.

Determining the appropriate replacement part and finding a vendor willing to sell you just one of them is difficult. The larger of the two fuses in that picture is made by Littelfuse and is rated at 10A. Easy to determine that when you know the Littelfuse logo . There are a couple of others on the motherboard which look identical to that one. They are either 10A or 7A fuses. The smaller of the two in the picture I also believe is made by Littelfuse. I tracked down the part number a month or two ago. Both fuses are available from Mouser.com and they do sell them in single unit quantities for about $1 (USD). The shipping is what kills you ; about $6. I don't know if they ship internationally or not.

From your description on how the system works off of the battery but doesn't charge, it could be possible that one of the smaller fuses is bad. It could also be a bad charging circuit or, to a lesser extent since you've used different ones, you could have an incompatible battery. As the schematics are not in general circulation, these are all best-guesses as to what the problem might be. If it does appear to be a problem with the internal charging circuit, then a work-around would be to use an external battery charger adapater like this one:

Thinkpad Multiple Battery Charger II

Also referenced as FRU 22P9040. There is an older version, FRU 02K6642 that I use for my T2x batteries. Simply attach the battery(ies) to the adapter and plug in the standard 72 watt AC power supply.

[vlyne]

You should read 0 ohms for a good fuse and nothing (infinite) ohms for a bad fuse. That's the easy part.

That's true for a fuse out of circuit but a blown fuse still embedded in a circuit may not register as an open circuit. The main fuses should return 0 ohms but those flat green fuses will register 0.2 to 0.4 ohms and from memory this is also true of those picofuses.

The part involved has to carry a large current (a few amps at least) so it has to be one of the substantial current capacity parts. So, diodes could be involved as well as the large transistor type components. Fuses are easy to check as a start.

The blinking orange indicator is misleading at times. I had a battery being reconditioned last night when at about 19% capacity left it suddenly went from orange to binking orange and then hibernation. The simple-minded intelligent battery maximiser seems to extrapolate incorrectly the rate of discharge and loss of voltage, so if there is a sudden surge of power usage and the battery's voltage drops, it will quit. I fired up the laptop again on battery power and reduced the load on it. It registered 0.00 time left and went from 1% capacity left to 0% and stayed there for a good 40 minutes whilst sucking about 9 to 24 Watts from the supposedly dead battery. And no, after all that, the "reconditioning" didn't improve the battery's capacity!

Good luck with the hunt!
Cheers

[rkawakami]

You should read 0 ohms for a good fuse and nothing (infinite) ohms for a bad fuse. That's the easy part.

That's true for a fuse out of circuit but a blown fuse still embedded in a circuit may not register as an open circuit.

True, but notice I said "lowest ohms range". That should be good enough for most modern digital multimeters whose lowest range would be somewhere around 300 or 3,000 ohms. I would hope that there isn't any less resistance than that from the surrounding circuits. Then again, maybe I should re-qualify that as 0 ohms and not zero ohms .

[thomanski]

Guys,

all of this brings back vague school memories of R = U/I (or so). I shall investigate this weekend and I'm just glad none of you will be able to watch me being utterly overwhelmed by simple physics!

Oh, another thing, slightly off-topic: Last time I opened my T41 to replace both memory sticks I noted a warning about not reusing the screws but replacing them with new ones whenever opening the machine. Does anybody take that seriously? Should they? I certainly didn't.

Many thanks,
Thomas

[FlyingFIN]

is enybody found eny sollutions? my t23 charge only 0,06a / 0,62w it will take 3days load my battery...

[FlyingFIN]

I empty my ny battery in 2%. then i loadet it 3 days and it stops loadin in 82% showin only 0.00a curent.

[Stargate199]

I empty my ny battery in 2%. then i loadet it 3 days and it stops loadin in 82% showin only 0.00a curent.

I had a similar problem with my older 600E battery. I would run it down and it would only charge to 86%. This battery was deteriorating rapidly so this had proved my point that one of the power cell were going bad. Eventually the battery circuit chip finally saw the drop in capacity and then the power meter was accurate again. Now your battery may be the same thing. If you have a new battery, sometimes the circuit chip will not recognize its full value. Doing a couple of full cycles should fix this problem. That what I had to do to get my 600 to ready the battery information correctly.

[thomanski]

Heya,

getting back to the original post (and sorry about the huge delay), I did check the fuses and they turned out to be alright. After having very, very carefully reassembled the machine I found I had three screws left and thought I'd better get someone in who is a little more apt with hardware.

That someone read these posts as well and checked the fuses but found no fault. As he had a replacement board handy the machine is now working perfectly again. And I have an additional T23 motherboard that works well except it doesn't charge the battery.

All the best,
Thomas

[FlyingFIN]

Hi

Now i have tested 2 powersuply and dock, 3 batteries.
symptoms is still the same.

I can charge the batterys but i will take 2-3 days. i think that mb is bad?
But why it is loading 0.06A? if there is something broken it would be some curent controller mayby.

now i will trying to get new mb.

PS. sorry my bad writing skils.