Re: 701C Battery Discharge

["John H. Kim" <jokim@tuna.mit.edu>]

On Fri, 1 Mar 1996, Emanuel Brown wrote:

> 	I seem to remember seeing John Kim mentioning a similar problem
> with his 701 on comp.sys.laptops, but not recieving any answer.
> Synopsis:
> 	My system has lately, on an intermittent basis, been shutting off
> with the claim that the battery's discharged, despite displaying an
> almost full charge only seconds before.

Well, I was only responding to someone else who had the problem.  I've
experienced it once though.  I was on a plane and discharged a battery
until the computer auto-suspended.  I replaced it with my second battery
and ran that to about 20%.  When I got home, I completely charged the
second battery.  I then popped in the first battery to charge it and was
surprised to see 100%.  I turned it off and back on and it still said
100%.  Furthermore, it wasn't charging.

I was certain I had only charged the second battery, but just to be sure
I popped it in.  100%, and I had only had time to charge one battery so
I knew the first battery was still discharged.  I put the first battery
back in (still saying 100%) and let the computer sit.  It seemed to be
discharging as if full, then 10 minutes later it went from 3:02 left to
0:00 and suspended.

After that, it recharged normally and I haven't had the problem again.

Since it's possible for the battery to say 100% when it isn't really at
100%, that might account for why it seems to die with 30+% or an hour
left.  For some reason it thinks it's reached 100% charge when it's only
at 70%.  That stops the battery from charging futher.  Then when 
discharging it estimates time from 100%, meaning the battery is drained 
when the computer thinks there's 30% left.  I'm rather curious how the 
computer comes up with these numbers. 
--
John H. Kim         "A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight
jokim@mit.edu       for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in
jokim@tuna.mit.edu  a national election."  -- Bill Vaughan