CF19 Battery Refurbishing

Hello, i'm focusing on y new laptop (CF19) i ordered some spares from australia, it will take a while before arrive, so i have to do what i can with things i have here, so i opened y battery, a CF-VZSU30, it's a 6.6 Ah, and on what i discovered after the opening, it uses 6 li-ion cells of 2200mAh each, it's a series of 2 parallels of 3 cells each.

A photo is better than 1k words


Now, replacing the cells is the easy part of the plan, resetting the eepro that surely will be onboard is a little less easy, the main problem is that on the chip there's some ICs i identified any of them, li-ion charg regulator, power mosfets, bidirectional switches, but there'are 2 ICs left that i can't identify, i can't find the datasheet over the net, i googled a lot but nothing...

The "names" of these chips are 04M339 and CEG342, them both are 8 pins in TSSOP package... if you know anything about these, please let me know.
Without a reset the battey will charge and be useful but the lifespan of the cells will be limited by the old data stored in eeprom, if you can reprogram the eeprom, you will be able to use whatever cells you want, 2000mAh, 3000mAh and so. having a 12Ah battery isn't a bad idea.
I was wondering, is it possible that the recalibration utility can reprogram the eeprom ? Ok, i know that is possible, but it works that way ?

 

Good luck on your quest. Many have tried and failed. This may be the Holy Grail of uber secret Panasonic information.

I think they are part #forgetaboutit and made from un obtanium

 

I have played with it myself with a CF-28 battery. I could never get a signal from the chip to show up on my EPROM reader. So I have moved that project to the back of the line.

 

I know next to nothing about eeproms, but what if someone would disassemble a new battery and download the "image" of those eeproms?
Couldn't you then just flash the chips in the re celled batteries? Like I said, I am clueless on this.
I will bet a dozen donuts that those are Panasonic made chips. I would look in Panasonic catalogs.
CEG342 sure looks like a Panasonic number to me.

 

This website might be of help to you, they use a lot of 18650 the standard lin-ion battery`s in there flashlight`s

Flashlight Electronics - Batteries Included

John.

 

In programming the chips you are just making a switch of 0 and 1. The early chips were easy to reset. They had a glass window on the top and could be reset with an ultraviolet light through that window.

 

Yes of course but i have not to reset ALL data on the eeprom, otherwise it will be irremediably unreadable, but i have to restore the original condition of the battery, like new, i think that is not too difficult to read the data they are only two wire, ClockBus, DataBus and Ground, so you now what's ground, you only need to "sniff" data on the two lines with the help of a computer and then interpreting the data flow, to know which protocol is it using, lots of them uses SmBus... But not all of them...

 

I really don't have that much experience with it. I got a older reader that plugs into a desktop port and was working with leads. I may of not had a good connection. I got some advice from a older electrician on the rig that use to mess with the older ones.

 

I found a program in demo version, it's named smart battery workshop, it allow you to read a battery EEPROM, but only on battery thet uses SMBus system, it require a very simple adapter to connect on a LPT port, and only 3 wire, i will put it together when i have some spare time, probably after Christmas.

 

OK, i'm not able to refurbish this cf19 battery, i token one from china, but... I dismantled the li-ion cells in the battery, and found that these cells are enormously superior to all other cells sold apart, thay are panasonic cells, and their specs guarantee strong current both in charge and discharge, making them capable of feeding big current loads, i used one of this cells in my cree flashlight, 3W about 320 lumen, it make a huge difference, with the original superfire cells rated 4200mAh the torch draw 700mA, while it draws 1Ah with the pana cells that are rated 2200mAh, it's in the led specs and make a lot of light, i can say 150%, and the cell last longer than the superfire that it's obviously overrated.

 

Thanks for that info about the SMBbus and the program, here is the spec:
http://sbworkshop.com/sbdat110.pdf

It seems that if the Panasonic battery uses this interface (and they probably do) then
access to the microcontroller and the flash memory is available at the battery terminals.
That is what it says here in the description:
Smart Battery Workshop

The Smart Battery Workshop program will let you read out all the data from the
controller and reset it to like new with one keystroke. There is a free demo of the
program that they say is time limited, so I hope that the reset function works. Otherwise
I saw prices of $160 and $70 for the program in different places. I have two batteries
here at the moment, not Panasonic, that need to be reset so this is an excellent find.

I've also read that after rebuilding a battery you need to apply power to the power pins
of the battery to "wake it up", its possible that a laptop will not do this if it reads that
the battery is in a locked state. I've read that 9V is good enough so one could use a
small 9V battery to do this, plus to plus, minus to minus - proceed at your own risk
and you will probably fry the controller if you get it backwards. This probably does not
reset all the parameters in the controller, not sure really.

Thanks again!

Also, I don't think you need to alter any parameters in the controller in order to use
higher capacity batteries since the charge level is based on voltage not current. The
full and low battery levels are sensed at the same voltage it will just take longer to get
to the low state with higher capacity batteries. It's possible that they could be charged
at a higher rate but it will just take longer with the program set for a lower capacity
battery - no big deal if you are charging overnight.

 

I hope you guys can get this done. I tried and failed on the CF-28 batteries as well. There must be a way to do it as there are/were many battery rebuilding places on the web where you either buy outright or send in your old battery as a core for a discount. They have to be able to do it... So there has to be a way. But I think it is a carefully guarded secret.

 

Hmmm, my good CF-51 battery has a 10 pin connector, it is possible that
there are multiple power and ground pins to handle the current and for
redundancy but that is still a lot of connections. Other batteries I've seen
have 2 larger that are power and ground and 3 more that are the SMBus
pins. I'm not going to hack open this good battery but does anyone know
where I might find the battery pin out description?

 

Look for the pin out for the whole toughbook. It won't give all the info a battery schematic would, but it's a start.

 

If you look at the photos in this tread you can see it, it's very dark so you have to magnify it with a graphic program.

 

OK, this is the pinout of the battery connector (on the battery side)

10) GND (Gnd don't need more info)
9) TH (Thermal sensing with a thermistor, don't know value and if it's a PTC or NTC, the other pin should be connected to GND, but not sure)
8) SC (Serial Clock) These two are the interesting one
7) SD (Serial Data)
6) NC (Not Connected ?)
5) CT ?
4) VI (Voltage In ?)
3) VO (Voltage Out ?)
2) NC (Not connected ?)
SPACE GAP
1) VCC (Positive voltage supply)

 

adjusted pic



I have a cf19 schematic but the one page image is 2megs. I need to work on resizing it, but now I have to go to work.

 

6 Panasonic 18650 cells cost ~USD 50.
Good condition genuine CF-19 battery - USD 55 or even less.
Is there any sense to refurbish old battery?

 

Where it gets worthwhile is older units that Panasonic doesn't make batteries for anymore. Also the possibility of putting in larger mah cells in. I could take a 6.6 cf52 battery and turn it into a 8.65 one. or possibly higher.

 

Excellent, thanks for the pinout list! I'll put making that interface board on my list
of things to do. My batteries are not urgent to get to but I am very curious to try
this. Thanks again.

Oh, and there are several batteries for other laptops that are known to go into the
locked state too readily, as if it is a bug in the controller. So this would be nice
to take them back out. I think this happened after several fires were reported for
laptop batteries and they got overly cautious. This program will allow us to put
in whatever brand/capacity battery we want and reset the controller - this is good
so that we can avoid low quality battery types.

 

Yes but Pana cells are the best so you have to use batteries with same or higher specs, in C charge and discharge current.
I'm very interested in making a huge current battery, using ie 4000mA cells, a 12A battery isn't seen every day.

 

I can see one more weakness - with 12Ah battery you will spend much more time to charge it
Isn't it easier to buy 1, 2, 3... spare batteries and external charger for them?
I'm using this scheme now. When I really need endless battery - I take 2-3 more batteries with me.

 

In some situations we have limited space. When I am on a service call, I can only carry so much. I already need a lot of tools and 3 batteries is too much extra. I only have 2 hands.

 

Yes you re both right, i prefer to leave my pc on charge (it's permanently on charge) and use it when i need it with only one battery, but it's just my case.

 

PS i think i fried my interface because i can't connect to any battery, when i've time i should make another one.