problem with Thinkpad T20 battery charging

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I've been having some problems with battery charging
related to going into suspend mode.

With my previous battery, everything seemed to work.
Regardless of whether the laptop was in suspend, hibernate
or working, if the battery was < 100% charged and if it
was plugged in, the battery would charge.

However, that battery lost its ability to hold a charge
and I replaced it. With the new battery, charging would
work fine, except when I put in suspend mode. When in
suspend, it wouldn't charge. When brought out of suspend,
I would have to disconnect and reconnect the charger cable
in order to get it to start charging. However, this
problem would not happen when going into hibernate and
getting out.

And then, yesterday, I decided to upgrade the BIOS (1.22).
Now, when I put it in suspend, the battery will not charge
unless the computer is shutdown and restarted. This is
bit of a pain, as it means that I pretty much cannot suspend
without having to shutdown!
I would appreciate any help/ideas for fixing this.

Thanks,
Anoop

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

William wrote:
> Is the 'new' battery a real live IBM battery or some cheap ripoff?
> Many device manufacturers are getting paranoid about liability issues
> related to exploding lithium batteries, and won't work {well,
> properly, at all} with off-brand batteries. Maybe the smart charger
> chip in your new battery isn't quite compatable with your old one...

It is an OEM battery that I bought from a seller on eBay.
Buying a battery from IBM costs a lot (about 2x) more.

Anoop

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

ghanwani@gmail.com wrote:
> I've been having some problems with battery charging
> related to going into suspend mode.
>
> With my previous battery, everything seemed to work.
> Regardless of whether the laptop was in suspend, hibernate
> or working, if the battery was < 100% charged and if it
> was plugged in, the battery would charge.
>
> However, that battery lost its ability to hold a charge
> and I replaced it. With the new battery, charging would
> work fine, except when I put in suspend mode. When in
> suspend, it wouldn't charge. When brought out of suspend,
> I would have to disconnect and reconnect the charger cable
> in order to get it to start charging. However, this
> problem would not happen when going into hibernate and
> getting out.
>
> And then, yesterday, I decided to upgrade the BIOS (1.22).
> Now, when I put it in suspend, the battery will not charge
> unless the computer is shutdown and restarted. This is
> bit of a pain, as it means that I pretty much cannot suspend
> without having to shutdown!
> I would appreciate any help/ideas for fixing this.
>
> Thanks,
> Anoop
>
I am not sure this will help you but as the owner of a brandnew R51, I
can tell you that the IBM software that monitors the charging of the
battery has caused me problems: sometimes, the battery will not charge,
the AC adapter just provides the juice to run the machine. This has to
do also, I really believe, with going into suspend: the program
certainly does not resume adaquately. This is no big nuisance for me and
I have not yet experimented disabling this utility from startup. But may
be you should look into this, check if some IBM software is monitoring
the charging of the battery and disable it to see what happens.

Hope this helps

John

--
John Doue