Lenovo x120 running FC16.
I just noticed friday when I unplugged to go into suspend for the sabbath, that the system was reporting only 1 hour on my battery, and then only 30 min,,,, so I plugged back in and suspended without turnning off the powerstrip (so that the battery was on charge). The system light went orange, then very quickly to green.
This evening, I took it out of suspend and tried unplugging and again right away it showed only an hour. So I plugged it back in. The battery icon reported 4% available and the system light was orange. When the system light turned green, the battery icon reports 70% charged, and still does.
I am traveling tomorrow morning to IEEE 802 meeting so I have no time to take this to a repair place of contact the mailorder (B&H) where I got it.....
Is this the sight of a bad battery, or is fc16all hosed wrt the battery level????
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On 03/10/2012 07:19 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Lenovo x120 running FC16.
I just noticed friday when I unplugged to go into suspend for the
sabbath, that the system was reporting only 1 hour on my battery, and then only 30 min,,,, so I plugged back in and suspended without turnning off the powerstrip (so that the battery was on charge). The system light went orange, then very quickly to green.
This evening, I took it out of suspend and tried unplugging and
again right away it showed only an hour. So I plugged it back in. The battery icon reported 4% available and the system light was orange. When the system light turned green, the battery icon reports 70% charged, and still does.
I am traveling tomorrow morning to IEEE 802 meeting so I have no
time to take this to a repair place of contact the mailorder (B&H) where I got it.....
Is this the sight of a bad battery, or is fc16all hosed wrt the
battery level????
It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also, if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in the battery, not the computer.)
Mikkel - -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
On 03/10/2012 08:41 PM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
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On 03/10/2012 07:19 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Lenovo x120 running FC16.
I just noticed friday when I unplugged to go into suspend for the
sabbath, that the system was reporting only 1 hour on my battery, and then only 30 min,,,, so I plugged back in and suspended without turnning off the powerstrip (so that the battery was on charge). The system light went orange, then very quickly to green.
This evening, I took it out of suspend and tried unplugging and
again right away it showed only an hour. So I plugged it back in. The battery icon reported 4% available and the system light was orange. When the system light turned green, the battery icon reports 70% charged, and still does.
I am traveling tomorrow morning to IEEE 802 meeting so I have no
time to take this to a repair place of contact the mailorder (B&H) where I got it.....
Is this the sight of a bad battery, or is fc16all hosed wrt the
battery level????
It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also, if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in the battery, not the computer.)
How do I get the battery to cycle? It HAS been a long time since a REAL poweroff (number of reboots). Also I have not run the battery down for a long time. Really not since I got the system back in Jan... I bet I am past my 90 day warranty...
IBM is UPSing me a new battery to my hotel. I should have it by wednesday. We shall see how this one works...
On 03/10/2012 04:31 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 03/10/2012 08:41 PM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
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On 03/10/2012 07:19 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Lenovo x120 running FC16.
I just noticed friday when I unplugged to go into suspend for the
sabbath, that the system was reporting only 1 hour on my battery, and then only 30 min,,,, so I plugged back in and suspended without turnning off the powerstrip (so that the battery was on charge). The system light went orange, then very quickly to green.
This evening, I took it out of suspend and tried unplugging and
again right away it showed only an hour. So I plugged it back in. The battery icon reported 4% available and the system light was orange. When the system light turned green, the battery icon reports 70% charged, and still does.
I am traveling tomorrow morning to IEEE 802 meeting so I have no
time to take this to a repair place of contact the mailorder (B&H) where I got it.....
Is this the sight of a bad battery, or is fc16all hosed wrt the
battery level????
It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also, if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in the battery, not the computer.)
How do I get the battery to cycle? It HAS been a long time since a REAL poweroff (number of reboots). Also I have not run the battery down for a long time. Really not since I got the system back in Jan... I bet I am past my 90 day warranty...
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On 03/10/2012 04:31 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 03/10/2012 08:41 PM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also, if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in the battery, not the computer.)
How do I get the battery to cycle? It HAS been a long time since a
REAL poweroff (number of reboots). Also I have not run the battery down for a long time. Really not since I got the system back in Jan... I bet I am past my 90 day warranty...
Sorry for the late response. This is normally covered in the user's manual. What you do is first fully charge the battery. Then you unplug the power and let the system run down until it does an automatic shutdown. Then you charge it up again. Some systems come with a utility that runs the battery down, so you do not have to worry about your OS shutting the system down too soon.
Mikkel - -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
On 03/12/2012 09:46 AM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
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On 03/10/2012 04:31 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 03/10/2012 08:41 PM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
It sounds like a bad battery. At least I have had the same thing happen in both Linux and Windows when a battery was going bad. Also, if you do not cycle the battery, the chip that monitors battery life in the battery does not get updated to the current battery life, so it ends up reporting the battery state incorrectly. (The chip is in the battery, not the computer.)
How do I get the battery to cycle? It HAS been a long time since a
REAL poweroff (number of reboots). Also I have not run the battery down for a long time. Really not since I got the system back in Jan... I bet I am past my 90 day warranty...
Sorry for the late response. This is normally covered in the user's manual. What you do is first fully charge the battery. Then you unplug the power and let the system run down until it does an automatic shutdown. Then you charge it up again. Some systems come with a utility that runs the battery down, so you do not have to worry about your OS shutting the system down too soon.
I did this when I first got the unit. And it SEEMed to run fine for 2 months with few power offs.
And it was working just fine a couple weeks ago. My practice is friday afternoon to suspend then shut off on the powerstrip (turning the KVM, switch, AP and other sundries off). Saturday night I would power up and have 80% power left. It seems that two weekends ago, it when blewy, as it cold booted that saturday night. I fought with it all week and then on friday realized I had a battery problem.
Now with the new battery, how with Fedora, am I going to run down the battery? I don't see that IBM has a Linux utility for this, oddly enough...
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On 03/12/2012 03:13 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 03/12/2012 09:46 AM, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
Sorry for the late response. This is normally covered in the user's manual. What you do is first fully charge the battery. Then you unplug the power and let the system run down until it does an automatic shutdown. Then you charge it up again. Some systems come with a utility that runs the battery down, so you do not have to worry about your OS shutting the system down too soon.
I did this when I first got the unit. And it SEEMed to run fine for
2 months with few power offs.
And it was working just fine a couple weeks ago. My practice is
friday afternoon to suspend then shut off on the powerstrip (turning the KVM, switch, AP and other sundries off). Saturday night I would power up and have 80% power left. It seems that two weekends ago, it when blewy, as it cold booted that saturday night. I fought with it all week and then on friday realized I had a battery problem.
Now with the new battery, how with Fedora, am I going to run down
the battery? I don't see that IBM has a Linux utility for this, oddly enough...
It is usually a DOS or BIOS utility. I remember it being included with one Thinkpad I had. You normally do not want to do this from Linux or Windows, because the hard drive is not unmounted properly. I will have to see it The Ultimate Boot CD has the utility.
Mikkel - -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Now with the new battery, how with Fedora, am I going to run down the battery? I don't see that IBM has a Linux utility for this, oddly enough...
Those types of battery conditioning are no longer required on the latest lithium ion units. Now... old NiCD are a different story.
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On 03/12/2012 03:23 PM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Now with the new battery, how with Fedora, am I going to run down the battery? I don't see that IBM has a Linux utility for this, oddly enough...
Those types of battery conditioning are no longer required on the
latest lithium ion units. Now... old NiCD are a different story.
It is not for conditioning the battery. It is to update the battery calibration. I admit that my newest laptop is about 5 years old, but the user's manual says to do it once a month. It also advises not to leave the laptop plugged in when not in use. I believe this is because the charger tends to short cycle the battery charge - once it gets below 100%, it charges it right away, as compared to the newer charging circuits that let it drop to 95% before charging.
One thing to keep in mind with lithium batteries is that there is a chip inside that tells you how much charge the battery has. You can not base it on battery voltage, because the voltage remains the same for most of the charge, with a drop at the end of the charge. But as the battery ages, it does not hold as much of a charge. If you do not discharge and recharge the battery, the battery condition circuitry never gets updated with the current battery life.
One other thing I have seen recommended is to remove the battery if you are going to be running on AC most of the time. You put the battery back in about once a month to recharge it from storage losses. It does require that the laptop be able to run without the battery. I do not know if any current laptops use the battery as a filter capacitor to keep the supply voltage constant...
Mikkel - -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
It is not for conditioning the battery. It is to update the battery calibration.
Most do this at boot so if Robert did a full power reset he should be fine. There is no need to run a utility or manually run the battery down.
Older, Ni-Cad, laptops did have calibration utilities in their BIOS. No longer the case with Li-On.
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On 03/12/2012 03:47 PM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
It is not for conditioning the battery. It is to update the battery calibration.
Most do this at boot so if Robert did a full power reset he should
be fine. There is no need to run a utility or manually run the battery down.
Older, Ni-Cad, laptops did have calibration utilities in their
BIOS. No longer the case with Li-On. How do they calibrate on boot? I know they can read the battery status on boot, or battery change, but that is just getting a report from the circuit in the battery. The circuit in the battery needs a power cycle to recalibrate.
Now, Ni-Cads did not have or need this circuit, as they have a predictable voltage curve, so you can check the status by checking the battery voltage. Lithium-Ion batteries do not experience a voltage drop until they are almost dead. So you can not determine the battery status by reading battery voltage. You have to ask the battery about its state.
This circuit in the battery is the reason you have to go through extra steps when rebuilding a Li-Ion battery pack to get full performance. Some (most?) of the battery circuits remember the last battery curve even after removing the power. So you have to tell the chip to delete the saved battery state, and recalibrate for the new batteries.
Mikkel - -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
It is not for conditioning the battery. It is to update the battery calibration.
Most do this at boot so if Robert did a full power reset he should
be fine. There is no need to run a utility or manually run the battery down.
This is very interesting and may solve a power problem on a couple of laptops we have. How do we do a full power reset please Roger -------------------------
Older, Ni-Cad, laptops did have calibration utilities in their
BIOS. No longer the case with Li-On. How do they calibrate on boot? I know they can read the battery status on boot, or battery change, but that is just getting a report from the circuit in the battery. The circuit in the battery needs a power cycle to recalibrate.
Now, Ni-Cads did not have or need this circuit, as they have a predictable voltage curve, so you can check the status by checking the battery voltage. Lithium-Ion batteries do not experience a voltage drop until they are almost dead. So you can not determine the battery status by reading battery voltage. You have to ask the battery about its state.
This circuit in the battery is the reason you have to go through extra steps when rebuilding a Li-Ion battery pack to get full performance. Some (most?) of the battery circuits remember the last battery curve even after removing the power. So you have to tell the chip to delete the saved battery state, and recalibrate for the new batteries.
Mikkel
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On 03/12/2012 10:47 AM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
It is not for conditioning the battery. It is to update the battery calibration.
Most do this at boot so if Robert did a full power reset he should be fine. There is no need to run a utility or manually run the battery down.
Older, Ni-Cad, laptops did have calibration utilities in their BIOS. No longer the case with Li-On.
I received a new battery from IBM. They shipped it from the Harrisburg, PA warehouse to me here in Waikoloa HI (IEEE 802 plenary meeting) in 2 days. They included a shipping label to send back the old battery, so that is on its way.
After 4 hours on AC and running, the F16 battery icon is reporting 100% charged but showing the charging icon. When it first showed 100%, I unplugged and was 'told' I ahd 3 hours battery. That was after about 1.5 hours charging (it came 30% charged). WHen I unplugged a few minutes ago, I got 'estimating' for a couple minutes and then it came back with 8 hours. I plugged back in and it is again showing 100% charge and charging.
No instructions or tools were included. When I get home friday, I will check the battery instructions I got with the unit and figure out what I might do. I really don't know how say a DOS utility would work to run down the battery; how do I boot DOS? From USB? (I do have a USB diskette drive!)
I am also going to order a second battery tonight. I have EU next week, so I want a little more insurance.
-
Michael Cronenworth -
Mikkel L. Ellertson -
Robert Moskowitz -
Roger