>Similar laptop here, and 18V power adapter. However the
>internal battery is only 10-ish or so volts.

The battery in mine is a 14.4V Li-Ion unit. It is a Dell Latitude XPi CD. I
suspect it needs a good 12V to drive the CD motor.

>The official 12 volt accessory for this laptop costs
>150 euro's from Dell. It's probably nothing more than
>over/under voltage protection and spike supression (of
>course very important, but not 150 euro's worth).

Ouch. Certainly not going to spend a hundred quid to do that.

....

>Try to find some more info on the net about your model,

Yeah have found the service manual from the Dell site, have not gone digging
yet to see if the input voltage is critical.

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