Potential T43 Charging Circuit Issue

[de_la_espada]

Hi All,

I recently aqquired a T43(Type:1871) from Ebay.

The charging light on the unit stays a constant amber regardless of which battery I put in\left to charge on mains.

The seller has left in the original Hard Drive, but had completely wiped it (including system restore partition).

I have downloaded and installed version 1.22 of Power Manager.
This recognises the battery and it's size, but resoloutely maintains the system is charging when it's not even attached to the mains.
And says 'charging' but % charged doesn't increase.

I have tested the ac adapter and it is outputting 16.5volts which is what its supposed to.

When I run on mains (without battery installed) I don't have any problems, but when I drained a battery completely, not only did the system not warn me of imminent power failure (despite being programmed to) but when I restart with the mains attached and the battery in, the system freezes (not on boot, just randomly in windows).

I have 2x 9 cell batteries which are aftermarkets.
10.8v 7200mah(standard is 6600mah). Replacement for FRU 08K8201 or 08K8199.

And one IBM original 6 cell. Which I drained fully for the test.

After the initial problems I also updated the BIOS from
70ET62WW (1.22 ) to 70ET69WW (1.29).

Thankfully the unit still has RTB warranty.
Would the consensus be that this is an issue with the charging circuit?

thanks

Nick

[richk]

I never test charging with aftermarket batteries. The cells are usually fine, but the circuit board is often flakey.

[de_la_espada]

It's a fair point. Thanks.
Also a teensy bit suspicious that these kick out 7200mah and not 6600.

But the testing was done with the standard IBM original.