Funny battery values (nx6325)

[Ian Smith]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010, Kevin Oberman wrote:
[..]
 > > I'm interested in this because my T23 battery is just about dead, only 
 > > sometimes taking a charge now - that or the charging circuit is dodgy, 
 > > which I'll find out when the new battery arrives.

 > FWIW, IBM/Lenovo recommend that, should the battery capacity stuff get
 > messed up, you FULLY discharge the battery and then re-charge. They say
 > to turn off all automatic shutdowns so the battery will completely
 > drain. (This does mean an fsck on re-boot and I suggest that you do a
 > sync(8) when it gets close and, of course, don't have anything open.
 > 
 > This is claimed to re-initialize the values stored in the battery and I
 > found this worked on a battery in my old 600E. Mine did not have a weird
 > "Design Capacity" value, though.

Yes, been through all that.  I drained it from the BIOS setup screen 
rather than with an OS running, until the power button won't respond at 
all.  I got one more charge cycle out of it after the last drain, but 
now it's always in critical charging state, and down to 8.6V, where it 
usually shuts off below ~10V.  Pretty sure it's done for .. possibly 
what Joerg experienced, with at least one cell shot.  I'm really hoping 
the charging circuit is ok; even at 8.6V charging 'present rate' is 0.

There's a line in acpi_cmbat.c, still in 8, that I'm very glad never 
became more than a perhaps, or I'd be in real trouble :)

/* XXX if all batteries are critical, perhaps we should suspend. */

cheers, Ian