My battery.

[Jiro]

Ok I bought a 9 cell battery from ebay about a year ago and then suddenly it went kaput about 4 months ago... It just would not charge... or it didnt even detect that there was a battery in the battery bay. So I just used my original battery pack. It was a great battery while it was working it held about 3+ hours charge before it suddenly died. My original battery already maybe 4 years old is still working but its very inconvenient to have about 1hour charge for huge 9 cell battery.

The dead unit is i believe 7200mah. I tried to figure the unit out by taking it apart so i pryed it open and found a board in it. I think that might have been damaged somehow. Anyway i think the cells are still good in it. I was planning to just do a cell transplant to my original unit. Do you think i can do this. Has anybody done it before?

[sjthinkpader]

Each manufacturer's cell behavior is different and the voltage, temperature cut off may be different. If you want to try transplanting the board, you need the exact same FRU number.

These things are prong to catch fire. So I won't do a hobby job and risk that later.

[poshgeordie]

Second SJTP - I've been looking into cell replacement and when soldering two cells tabs together I hadn't noticed a tiny hole in the insulated outer cover of one of the cells and momentarily shorted the tab against the hole. That cell got extremely hot extremely quickly (less than five seconds) but fortunately didn't go up in flames.

What people do is to have a suitable (not water) fire extinguisher to hand and a metal bucket of sand handy to drop the cell into if it does go up in flames.

Bottom line - I'm not doing cell replacement any more and wouldn't advise anyone else unless they take great care and lots of precautions - it's just too risky.

Also be very careful disposing of old batteries (and cells) and please don't just throw them in the trash. They are dangerous even when discharged and very polluting.

Apologies for sounding like an old nanny!!

[hhmcsv]

I tried to re-cell a T40 battery a while ago. Bought new cells, and with some difficulty took the battery apart, soldered the replacement cells in and tried to get it to operate. No luck

The Thinkpad would not recognize the battery, and would not charge it. I think the reason is, that the built-in electronics have to be reset somehow - and I could not find any instructions of doing so. The battery itself stores a number of data, such as production date, first commision date, cycle count etc. alongside with current measurements of charge, voltage and current.

If you download Lenovo Thinkvantage Power Manager, all of these data will display.

Hans-Henrik

[sktn77a]

Was the eBay 9 cell an original IBM battery or an aftermarket battery? Was it new? Used?

[synergy]

Here is a good link to the battery source.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSea ... &keywords=

I'm very tempted as well.
But I also heard that the little circuit board inside the battery needs to be reset in order for it to accept the cells as new.

[poshgeordie]

There are a couple of programs for resetting the counter:

via Windows: http://sbworkshop.com

Using a bootable CD with a Linux kernel: http://frantisek..battery.html

The Windows one is paid for, but the Linux one is free. Note however that the kernel in the Linux one is broken and needs to be recompiled.

There's also a topic on cell replacement here.