Nice find: DEC HiNote Ultra II

From: Fred N. van Kempen <waltje_at_pdp11.nl>
Date: Wed Aug 13 10:58:02 2003

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, John Ruschmeyer wrote:

> Personally, I wouldn't give up on the battery yet. I've got an older
> Dell here (P100SD- P5/100) which still holds >90% of its original
> charge. My suspicion is that the charge is so low that the internal
> charging circuit won't give it a full charge. (Does it try to charge
> the battery and then stop?) You may need to remove/insert/remove the
> battery several times to build up a small base charge before the laptop
> will charge it to full power.
No, problem was that lappy didnt even *see* the damn battery
pack, let alone charge it. It turns out that DEC, smart as
they were, had special gadgets in the battery pack to keep
it from going bad... however, that gadgetry would also lock
up if the batt drained 100% (read: leaving it be for a year
or so.)

There's a lil utility to kick the batt's butt (:) after which
the thing is seen again, and then can be charged. I did that,
and after a full charge-drain-charge cycle and many hours of
use, I verified it to be keeping 100% of its charge.. in
other words, even though its from 1997, its as new. YAY!

--f
Received on Wed Aug 13 2003 - 10:58:02 BST