X60 and X60 Same Story Battery 100% 1 Day Next Day DEAD!

[discoy2k]

hello, i am a long time thinkpad user, ive had every X since the x20 lol. anyways i am a heavy user of mine for wok everyday. everyday i run battery down to 10% or less and recharge it at least 2 to 3 times on my current x60 and x61. on average i probably get about 700-800 cycles out the 8-cell batteries. they really never start going dead. meaning the laptops running on the battery time gets shorter and shorter. but so far i have been through 4 batteries on the x60 and 4 on the x61. they all do the exact same thing!!! they perform great 1 day, then the next morning i start up the laptop and the battery is completely dead! flashing amber light and all!

i am convinced there is time bomb in these things turning them off after so many cycles!

my question is this, i am assuming there is an eeprom inside the battery, has anyone dumped one? does anyone have a dump from a new battery or know how to reset the 'clock' per say?

i have professional chip programmers and soldering equipment so pulling the chip and dumping it would be no problem but i do not know what to rite back to it???

any advice/comments/experiences would be greatly appreciated

cheers
disco

[discoy2k]

1 more thing, today another x60 battery is saying it is dead but the power gauge stays at 87%? im gonna try to run the battery maint. again, but first time did no good?


any ideas?

cheers
disco

[discoy2k]

update...

i took apart 2 of the batterys

FRU 92P1171 8-cell
and
FRU 92P1172 8-cell

(no idea what the difference is and why different FRU)

anyway, i found problem. it seems lenovo is F*#! ing us!

the bq8030 chips are another lenovo proprietary chip, just like the security chips. basically when the chip thinks you used the battery enough it send command to the battery gauge and power management software telling it to tell you the battery is dead when it is really fine!

i can not find datasheets on these because they are proprietary but it didnt take but few months to crack the security chips so this should be a walk in the park!

i have been a faithful loyal LARGE customer of IBM/LENOVO for a decade at least, this to say the least make me a little upset.

(BTW i did test the other components and cells, even the heat sensative fuse, all passed with flying colors!)

cheers
disco

[EOMtp]

... basically when the chip thinks you used the battery enough ...

Fascinating discovery! Have you determined if "enough" is a static definition, e.g., 225 recharge cycles, or is it based on an algorithm which randomizes the meaning of "enough", such as weighing cycles with time lapsed or other parameters.

[bill bolton]

the bq8030 chips are another lenovo proprietary chip

No, they are not!

The bq8930 is a Texas Instruments part for battery management. Dell, and other laptop suppliers also use them.

i can not find datasheets on these because they are proprietary

More likely because you didn't try very hard

[discoy2k]

you said it yourself, they are battery management! that is what they do! the rest of the boards and cells are in perfectly working order, even the fuses have not blown. the chip turns the battery off. if you found a FULL datasheet not a product description sheet, with pinout, etc i would love to see it!

cheers
disco

[pgoelz]

Due to the nature of lithium cells, the pack requires battery management circuitry to monitor each cell in the pack. Before you can be sure the battery management chips are lying to you, you need to measure the battery voltage (and better still, the individual cell voltages) UNDER LOAD. It is very possible that the cells are OK open circuit but under load, one or more fall below the 3V cutoff that the battery management chips are there to monitor. It is also possible that the cells are sufficiently out of balance that the management chips declare the battery defective and shut it down even though the pack still has usable capacity.

Paul

[EOMtp]

To discoy2k: Please check the PM (Private Message) that I sent you.

[hinbun]

To discoy2k: Please check the PM (Private Message) that I sent you.

Dear discoy2k and EOMtp, I am also the X60 user, I also face the same problem my 4cell and 8cell batttery is also cannot charging. Can you send me the bq8030 chips datasheet to me? Thank you.
email: emailhk08-battery@yahoo.com.hk

[paul*robertson]

Very interesting, but in everyday practical terms what does this mean for an X60 user who has a dead battery.

[pgoelz]

Very interesting, but in everyday practical terms what does this mean for an X60 user who has a dead battery.

Practically speaking, unless you are willing and able to open the battery and replace the cells, the only other option is replace the entire battery.

Paul

[proaudioguy]

I'm willing to open the battery and replace the cells. What has to be done then to the chip to get it to turn the battery back on?

Also how do you open the battery without destroying it. I would like to keep the plastic in good condition. They really should make these easily replaceable like UPS' are.

[paul*robertson]

I'm willing to open the battery and replace the cells. What has to be done then to the chip to get it to turn the battery back on?

Also how do you open the battery without destroying it. I would like to keep the plastic in good condition. They really should make these easily replaceable like UPS' are.

If you do this, and it works, could you do a "how to" so others can maybe do the same.

[pgoelz]

I have only done this to my old TP600 battery. I replaced the LiIon cells with LiPoly. I did nothing to the "chip" to reset it..... it just reacted to the new healthy cells and off it went. In the 600 battery at least, the "chip" is a circuit board that is almost as complicated as a motherboard.

Since I have not replaced any cells in my x61s battery, I do not have any tips for you re: how to do it or how to get the case open. I did notice that where the OEM battery is glued shut, the Chinese knock off I replaced it with is not. It looks like it will be easy to open so if its cells fail it will be the one I use to replace the cells first. I'm also not sure where to get LiIon cells. There are lots of sources for all sorts of LiPoly cells because they are widely used in model aircraft, but no one uses LiIon. Electrically they are similar enough that they are interchangeable. But mechanically, they are very different. It took a bit of careful measuring to get the three flat cells into the space occupied by six cylindrical LiIon cells in my TP600 pack.

I really should open my OEM battery and measure the cells under load. I have always suspected that there is a bad cell that causes an emergency shutdown while the entire pack voltage is still showing usable capacity. But I have never been absolutely sure that the "good one day, bad the next" phenomenon isn't a glitch in the monitoring software. Whether or not Lenovo takes ownership of the issue, I would like to know for my own information.

Paul

[discoy2k]

sorry for delay everyone i had a few health issues, but i have aquired a few more x60/x61 batteries that dont work but have different issues, like 1 charges to 100% but if ya pull AC cord laptop kills lol.

iam back on the case and will try to dig deeper into the chips.

side note, today i am calling lenovo to [censored]/report about another 'quirk' they need to fix with software update so i may confront them about my discoveries so far, meaning i know they are in actuality by the letter of the law violating the law, meaning, they knowingly planned and cooridinated acts of fraud on thier customers.

(another side note, for last 9-11 yrs or so, since i ditched dell i prob purchase 30-40 thinkpads a year so i am not a random person who may have a had a bad apple! all thinkpads in X6x series do this for sure, T30's were defective from get go and they knew it! but i will state 100% THINKPADS ARE THE BEST QUALITY OUT THERE FOR THE MONEY! the only other i consider equal or better is Fujitsu but prices are worse than thinkpad lol)

back to the point, from what i have discovered so far from raw testing using commercial equipment and from public docs and from 'aquired' docs, LENOVO has whats old skool techs refer to as a 'time bomb' in these batteries.

for n00bs that means, there is a counter inside the battery, when the manu thinks you used it enough and its time you paid the extortion tax the battery shuts off, not because of a problem but because of use.

BTW this is 1 of the 3 reasons i quit using DELL and switched to thinkpads!

ok, hopping off the soap box

will keep you guys updated, PLEASE IF YOU HAVE ANY OF THE NEW THINKPAD HIGH LEVEL CONTACT INFO LET ME KNOW AFTER THE IBM-LENOVO SWITCH I LOST ACCESS! IT PROBABLY BENEFIT EVERYONE IF I CAN CALL THESE PEEPS DIRECT AGAIN, AFTER 30min ON PHONE CALL I HANG UP! LOL

have a great turkey day everyone! gobble gobble!

cheers
disco

[discoy2k]

sorry forgot to address an issue mentioned,

what i am talking about and trying to create a fix for has nothing to do with the cells. in fact EVERY SINGLE SO SAY DEAD battery i have analyzed in great detail did not have a single faulty cell. now some did 'go bad' because of circuitry failure or 'most' went bad when the temp diodes blew meaning it got to hot anf for safety reasons it shut down. those 2 situations DO NOT APPLY to what i am working on. i am looking at batteries that all cells tested 100% and all non programmable components tested 100%. meaning everything is 100% oki doki under the hood but the battery brain said 'hey guys, its miller time' lol

so to answer the question about a howto, this will not be doable by a normal person, it has nothing to do with the cells it has to do with programming the chips inside the battery.

why is this good for everyone? because if you have 4-5 brain cells you can make a cable to reprogram the chips for like $2 and 30min of solder time or buy one for like $30 and use it.

also of course, if you have access to chip programming equipment you can just pullt he eeproms and flash em real quick and save like $80

lastly, the price of 'refurbs' will drop to about $2 (exaggerating a little bit, but still)

cheers
disco

[paul*robertson]

I await with interest.

[story]

Did you figure it out?
How do you reprogram the chip exactly?

[pgoelz]

i am looking at batteries that all cells tested 100% and all non programmable components tested 100%. meaning everything is 100% oki doki under the hood but the battery brain said 'hey guys, its miller time' lol

Please elaborate..... did you measure the individual cell voltages UNDER LOAD at the point where the battery management shut down? I am guessing that the battery management circuitry monitors both overall state of charge AND individual cell voltage. Either can shut the system down. Measuring unloaded is not sufficient.

I strongly suspect that this issue is caused by one or more bad cells that reach the 3V cutoff prematurely, not any sort of "planned obsolescence" in the battery manager.

Paul

[story]

Power Manager said my 8 cell battery pack is dead and won't charge. I can't even turn on with the battery.

I just took apart my 8cell battery.
Surprise, Surprise. All 8 cells are working fine. It has at least 3.3Volt on each cell and I am charging them right now with my 18650 battery charger.

I now have 8 spare 18650 battery for my flashlights.

[bugmn]

Hey discoy2k are you still being active on the topic or gave up?
See my post here it still happens!

I try to figure out the i2c commands to get the faulty bit
unset - it definitively possible as there are backyard
companies that do such stuff, see this and that.

I'm also active on this topic at forums.lenovo.com.

Also I'm hardly searching the datasheet for the BQ8030DBT
or more generally BQ8030 but had no luck so far, maybe
someone can guide me?