[Cialug] bios fubar?

[Josh More]

I have seen laptops that wouldn't even turn on if they had a bad
battery.  My understanding is that the following logic applies to
certain older laptops (no clue about new ones).

If the battery exists, route all power through it and on to the
mainboard.
If the battery does not exist, send the power directly to the mainboard.

I think that the purpose is to keep the battery charged and possibly to
condition the power.  The flaw is that if the battery is in bad enough
shape to not hold charge, but in good enough shape to advertise it's
presence to the analog board, power will route into it... but not out.

I suspect that this is what you are experiencing.



-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701

>>> "Nathan C. Smith" <nathan.smith at ipmvs.com> 01/11/08 2:39 PM >>>
We have been having battery issues with our 1 year-old Lenovo T60s.  

A bad batch of batteries. 

-Nate

> -----Original Message-----
> From: neal daringer [mailto:admin at c0wzftp.com] 
> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 2:28 PM
> To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Cialug] bios fubar?
> 
> ok. it just resurected itself. (shucks i needed a doorstop). i tried 
> starting it up w/o the battery in it and voila it works now. 
> wtf is that 
> crap???? btw its a  Dell Latitude CPi  (Pentium II 364Mhz :-D, 128MB 
> ram).. thank god it works again. now i need to get DOOM3 on this baby 
> and go to town!!
> 
> on another note, have you ever heard of a case like this?? where the 
> battery is just so jacked up that the only way to run a 
> laptop is to not 
> use the battery??
> 
> 
>  jrnosee at gmail.com wrote:
> > Do you get a cursor on the screen at all?  If you're 
> willing to share, 
> > what's the make/model.  Some systems I've seen retain a 
> basic set of 
> > functionality for video, keyboard, and floppy so a bios can 
> be flashed 
> > if the current one is damaged.  Granted...that was a desktop board.
> >
> > On Jan 11, 2008 2:02 PM, neal daringer <admin at c0wzftp.com 
> > <mailto:admin at c0wzftp.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     i recently was updating the bios on an old laptop, it 
> showed that it
> >     finished. then it said, press enter to reboot. i 
> pressed enter. then
> >     nothing. it will turn on, but i does not show anything 
> nor act like it
> >     is doing anything worthwhile. any ideas on what i can 
> do or is it
> >     now a
> >     nice big paperweight/doorstop/booster seat/pretend
> >     computer/etc/etc/etc????
> >
> >     kinda pisses me off too because i got the bios update from the
> >     manufacters website. fyi its wayyyyyyyyyyy out of warranty.
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> >
> >
> > 
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