Purchased a G40 -several questions.

[Red_October_7000]

Hello all! After my R30 broke and several usuccessfull attempts to fix it, I am finally again with an IBM. I now have a very large G40 laptop (another "rare" thinkpad, I suppose), and lots of questions.

First, the battery is completely dead. It holds a charge for maybe 5 seconds. Can it be brought back to life, by jumping it, or feeding it and overcurrent or something (I am well aware of how dangerous messing with batteries can be. I am also a cheap bastid and if coaxing this one back to life means taking safety precautions then I will do it) or will I need to re-cell it? What flavor cells does it use, and where can I buy them? Can I substitute nickel-metal-hydride cells, or will it balk at anything but lithium-ion cells? The battery constantly reports 100% but the current, voltage, and wattage meters are all pegged at zero, and attempting to refresh the battery does nothing.

Secondly, the power connector loves to fall out. This is complicated by the first issue. It seems to be horribly designed. Any solution? I'm trying to figure out a way to attach the power cord to the chassis so there is no strain on it from the unusually heavy cord, but such is less than ideal for a number of reasons.

Furthermore, it came with a werid, cup-shaped trackpoint nipple. It won't take the regular one off my R30. Where do I get new nipples for it! I want the regular one back. The inside has a sort of plastic liner.

Lastly, just tonight not ten minutes ago, the power connector slipped out and the machine shut down (naturally). But it would not power up on re-start for about ten or so minutes, spent furtively trying new outlets, line cords, and hunting for my multimeter (which I never found, because the machine spontanously decided to work again (I'm posting from it now). What the hell is up with this? The charge light would not come on. Then all of a sudden it came back on and the machine worked. I've never seen a modern computer boot so [censored] fast -it takes perhaps 15 seconds from black to full desktop.

[ajkula66]

Trackpoint caps are the same. Take the small black plastic square out of the current one that you dislike, put it in the one from R30 and apply to the keyboard, with gentle pressure.

You'll probably need to re-solder the AC input, hopefully it's not a difficult one.

As for re-filling the battery, I can't give you much of advice, but G4x units were known for abysmal battery life even when they were new. I doubt that it's worth trying to re-fill it, and possibly blowing up the machine...

Good luck with your new ThinkPad.

[Red_October_7000]

Well the AC input itself is firms attached, it's just that the connector (a modified heavy-duty 4 pin mini DIN "reverse" -i.e. the pins are on the chassis in a recess and the plug is female) doesn't have very good gripping strenght. Add to that an unusually thick cable, and you have a plug that likes to unplug itself. With a basically useless battery, it's shutting itself down more than I'd like.

The batteries are very expensive on Ebay; I just want to know what size cell is inside so I know what to buy to re-cell the one in it. I'm not hung up over capacity; I just want some protection against the plug falling out and the damage and data loss inherrent in a laptop that shuts down randomly due to no power.

[ajkula66]

You wouldn't know whether your current one is a 8-cell or a 12-cell...what's the FRU on it?

You may want to post a WTB ad in the forum's Marketplace section regarding the battery...and see what happens...

Having owned a couple of G4x units in the past, I'm well aware what an odd AC adapter they use, shared by ThinkPad mini-dock...