51nb x210 not recognizing NOS extended battery

[mathiasx]

Hello,

I bought a NOS battery from eBay that was listed as for x200/x201/etc (and I had thought that all batteries from that era worked in different laptops.) Of course, the 51nb motherboard/BIOS is not the original so I don't know if that comes into play, but I wouldn't imagine they whitelisted batteries.

When I try to use the new extended battery, it doesn't show a charging LED and after booting on the wall charger, the Linux dmesg shows no battery installed. I tried the seller's suggestion of removing charger, removing battery, holding power button to clear CMOS/BIOS, and then reinstalling battery + charger and letting it sit, in case it was depleted. It sat overnight for over 12 hours and still doesn't recognize the battery.

Is there anything else to try? Are there any known issues with detecting and using other batteries with these?

Thanks in advance!

[axur-delmeria]

If your X210 recognizes other batteries except the new one, then it's likely that the new one is simply dead.

[mathiasx]

That’s what I figured, but I thought I’d ask. I’ve only got the battery that this (used before I got it) x210 came with, and no other Thinkpads of this vintage to try charging with.

The seller of these is claiming they tested as working but depleted. I guess I’ll end up returning it, and unfortunately will have to pay shipping on that.

It’s probably a stretch, but do these older packs use cells that can be replaced? Is rebuilding one even possible?

Edit: maybe a better question — can these cells be recharged by something like a bench top hobby (RC) multi-battery charger? There’s quite a few pins so I’m guessing the cell balancing logic is built in, not external (like RC lithium packs.)

[mathiasx]

I should add that I’ve flashed the patched EC but not put Coreboot on this.

I did some more reading and it seems like if the cell voltages drop too low, the controller in the battery bricks to prevent usage. Is that likely what happened here? And is there any way to undo that or recover it? The only thing I found online that worked was someone swapped cells on a non-bricked battery pack by connecting old and new at the same time, then removing the old cells: https://hackaday.io/page/247-replacing- ... -batteries

So to repeat (and hopefully someone knows) is there a way to reset these battery packs once they shut off, so that I can attempt to charge it again?

[mathiasx]

I received another battery from the seller to try, and it was sealed which may mean this one just sat on a shelf and got depleted too. The seller suspects my laptop is the problem, and I don’t have another Lenovo of this era to test the batteries in. Is there anything I can check, with a multimeter?

[RealBlackStuff]

Make a battery extension cable to test the battery with loads of other Lenovo laptops: viewtopic.php?p=680106#p680106

[mathiasx]

Unfortunately, I don’t have any other Thinkpads that take external batteries. I guess I was wondering more whether there’s some way to test the batteries with a multimeter and maybe charge them with something like a bench power supply, without buying the Lenovo external charger.