Laptop Battery Question

[Scrapmaster09]

Ok, my roomate's laptop battery died on him and being an engineering major, I offered to help. My current plans are to replace the 12 3.7 volt 2200 mAHr lithium ion cells with 18 AA 1.2 volt 2300 mAHr to match the power requirements (of course the lifespan of this will be on the order half of the original)

The original specifications are 14.8 volts at 6.6 AHr for a HP pavilion zd8000 laptop. There are 7 pins out to power the laptop, I need to know the voltages for each of the pins to make this replacements

 

[Scrapmaster09]

The reason my roommate gave me the battery pack was because it was fried, apparently it overheated and blew a built in fuse.

The PCB is permanently mounted in the housing so I cant examine it, even if I could, I'm a mechanical engineering major and it would be easier to make my own board to piggy-back onto the solder pads.

I've already riped out the guts so all I need to do is mount the batteries, which will be removed to be charged, and put together a PCB to distribute the power. My roommate suggested using diodes to block the laptop's built in charger.

This is just a little tinkering job that's practice for me, the battery will be fairly cheap (using rechargeable batteries of course) and will mainly be used to hop from power outlet to power outlet.

I have googled some, but apparently with the wrong words. Thanks for the feedback, it really helps.

By the way, do most laptop batteries regulate their own power to maintain the voltages? or is that something the computer itself handles.