From: billy_at_MIX.COM
Date: Thu Jul 19 2001 - 11:16:07 EDT
"jack_at_jackstuff.com" said -
> Not having an owner's manual, I'm flying blind here. I am under the
> impression that simply installing the battery, making sure the switch is
> set to the "|" position, and plugging the ThinkPad into the wall is all
> that I should have to do.
What operating system(s) are you running? If it's windows try holding
down the Fn key and then pressing F2 to make the battery monitoring
utility visible on the screen. You may have to do this a couple times
and it may take a second or two to respond. You can then use this to
run a discharge/charge cycle which will a) maybe actually recharge the
battery and b) sync up whatever it is that tells you the charge condition
of the battery with how the battery itself is doing.
As you've noted there is a tiny power switch on the batteries themselves,
I think this turns on the logic inside the battery the Thinkpad uses to
tell how charged up it is so be sure it's on before actually inserting
a battery in the machine.
If you only have DOS you can try the 'PS2 DISCHARGE' command which
should do the same thing. 'PS2 ?' will give you a list of all the
stuff this very handy utility can do, 'PS2 ? DISCHARGE' will explain
that command, etc...
On a good battery all this will take a few hours. If you see it go
from nothing to a full charge really fast (as in 20 minutes) you most
likely have a bad one.
And finally, IBM still has good batteries - I just bought one from
them, unfortunately it was $179 though (probably more than the computer
is now worth unless you're really attached to it)... The original one
that came with my 755CE lasted from 1995 until now so I can't complain
about that....
Billy Y..
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