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From: pastor@PRC.Unisys.COM (Jon Pastor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops
Subject: Re: Battery, memory, and disk info for the T1000SE
Message-ID: <16375@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Date: 5 Feb 91 20:05:58 GMT
References: <16203@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> <90002@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com> <45376@mips.mips.COM>
Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Paoli Research Center; Paoli, PA
Lines: 41

>In article <90002@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com>, limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Hui Lin Lim) writes:
>|> To add to the ongoing discussion about battery life on the T1000s. Has
>|> anyone noticed that occassionally the battery will get much hotter
>|> than usual?  It's as though the charger &/or system didn't realise
>|> that the battery is close to fully charged and forgot to switch to
>|> trickle charge.  The battery light stays orange rather than switching
>|> to green.
>|> 
>|> I haven't been able to figure out what causes this to happen (some
>|> combination of the battery being completely flat, the system not
>|> knowing the battery state (??? on the pop up screen), and whether
>|> you try to charge in one go or disconnect and reconnect the charger
>|> halfway thru).
>|> 

I just talked to Toshiba tech support again.  According to the woman I spoke
to, the charger uses a change in the rate of charge to determine when to 
switch to trickle -- it has no way of knowing how much of a charge is left
on the battery, so what else could it do?  THEREFORE, if you plug in with an
almost fully-charged battery, it's going to try to pump electrons in until
it sees a marked dropoff in charge rate.  Oops...

The solution is (you guessed it) let your battery run down before plugging
in.   Sigh.  There is a way to trick the charger, however, but it involves
removing the battery, reinserting it, and going into the popup menu and
pushing the charge indicator to 'F' -- this will apparently tell the charger
not to bother.  If I remember correctly, there is no other way to get the
battery indicator to go to "????" and be sensitive to the arrow keys, other
than popping the battery.

BTW, I asked her for her opinion on using a resistor to discharge.  She said
that they know people do it, it usually works, but if you don't do it right
you'll ruin your battery.  I assumed that "doing it right" meant not
draining the battery completelly, but I didn't ask.  When I asked her for an
approved method of discharging the battery, she suggested removing  it from
the machine for a day or so.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Pastor			pastor@prc.unisys.com
Unisys Corporation		..!{psuvax1,sdcrdcf,cbmvax,bpa}!burdvax!pastor
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