nio

I bought this really cool Compaq Armada m300 laptop, which, naturally, had a non-working battery. But after a bit of research it seemed that I could refurbish the battery myself.

I refitted the battery with 4 new LG18650 2400mAh cells, plugged it in, and.. nothing.
But when I press the test button on the battery one of the five LEDs lights up, and also, the OS does see there is a empty battery present, so from that it seems that the electronics might still be okay.

Probably the 24C01 or BQ2050 chip in the battery thinks the old non-working cells are still present and cuts of any current to and from the cells.
In that case I need to reset the chip.
I found that this can be done using the I2C interface with the SMBus, and running some software to send the reset command.

However I don't know yet the pinouts of the battery and how the reset command can be send.
Also I would really like to know if anyone else has been able to succesfully refit a smart battery, I need a bit of hope now

A picture of the batteries insides can be found here.

audioguru

My son got the same laptop with a dead battery. He used an axe or dynamite to get it apart and the Sony Li-Ion cells are fine, but its electronics doesn't work. We should trade. :lol:

__________________
Uncle $crooge