Hi Neil,

Most laptops have an option in the bios the synchronize the battery level
indicator.  You put the pc in this mode and it automatically drains the
battery and then recharges it, noting the time and current levels of the
recharge.

P.S. - If you have added a palmtop and installed active sync, there is a bug
that will keep your recharger from working properly on many laptops.  Had a
vendor recently who bought 2 or 3 batteries before he found this out.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Pic Dude
> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2002 3:36 AM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: [EE]: Laptop battery fading
>
>
> Between my 2 main batteries, and 1 aux battery, I used to get over
> 8 total hours of laptop usage, but that's down to less than 1 hour
> nowadays, as the battery life is fading.  I once invested some time
> in manually fully discharging and fully recharging one battery about
> 5 times, and it pick up a lot of life, but again it's fading.  Used to do
> that with model airplane nicads, but it apparently worked for these
> Li-Ion's.
>
> Discharging involved leaving the laptop on until it warns of battery
> failure and then puts itself to sleep, then I'd re-awaken it and let
> it drain some more.  At some point, it just died.  Then I would put
> it back to charge fully.  Needless to say, I didn't like letting the OS
> die un-gracefully.
>
> There's got to be a better way -- is there some form of battery
> cycler that I can purchase or build that will work for these (IBM
> Thinkpad 600x) batteries?
>
> Cheers,
> -Neil.
>
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