Possible Anomaly with CF28 secondary battery

I finally got one (CF-VZSU1428), so I tried it today, ejecting my dvd/cdrw drive. I inserted the battery, got a snug fit, and then powered it up. It didn't recognize that I had a battery in the MP slot. I turned it off again, ejected it, examined the connectors, shoved it back again (this time using a bit more force) and brought it back up. It immediately recognized the new battery and is merrily charging it now.

Has anyone seen this behaviour before?

Thanks!

 

Not sure. I'll find out when mine gets here in the next few days.

 

Something I also noticed was it uses the secondary battery first. I just drained it down to about 30% but the main battery is still at 100%. When you have the secondary battery installed, and you've been on battery power, you'll notice the MP led lights amber when you begin charging again. (I was only on battery power for about an hour, so it didn't drain the main battery) I need to test what happens when the secondary battery is drained. I seem to remember someone posting something that it had tried to shut down on them instead of transferring to the primary battery.

 

Yup... That was me. Unless you have the correct laptop described in the nomenclature... It will warn you that you have a dying battery and tell you to shut down. If you remove the battery when this comes on.. Your laptop goes on its merry way. There is supposedly a fix but ONLY for the models listed. I have the files but I haven't had one of the listed models to try it on. Someone here has and said it worked fine.

Read your manual... Of course the sellers don't mention this when they sell it.

The good news? It works PERFECTLY on the CF-29! (I'm using it now!) With that and a good, fairly new battery on the 29... I get around 7-10 hours run-time between charges. (Of course I lower the backlight a little too!)

 

Hi... well mine did not shut down! I'm sitting here in bed (I have a bad cold or something) the MP led is red, It automatically shifted to the primary battery, and so far it's been about 3hrs... I should have another 4+ left according to my calculations (and tests so far) ... Note: These are new batteries, so they'e at their optimal performance now.

 

I just got the battery, and I'm charging it now. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

Well for me, I was able to use the laptop for 7 hrs, 22 mins with both batteries. I did disable the shutdown/sleep at X% because I wanted to cycle the batteries. I did the bios refresh thing once to the new primary batter already but not the secondary so this was almost the same. I also noticed that when both batteries are installed (and both drained) it charges the primary battery first, then switches to the secondary.

Maybe I'm old but the idea that a laptop can be used for over 7hrs on internal battery power (constant use, wifi, etc) is simply amazing.

 

Here is a picture of the LEDs near the touchpad indicating charging the MP battery (secondary battery)

 

Mine is now charging the secondary battery, so we'll see how this goes.

I won't run out of power the next time I'm on a plane... Mwa ha ha.

 

Is the secondary battery hot swappable such as if you needed to plug in your CD-ROM drive while it is running on the secondary battery? Would the primary battery automatically take over?

 

I think on the machines that support it auto switching can do it, but the older ones can't.

I think just the CF-28S, and all CF-29's can.

 

My Dell Latitude 620 with the 2nd battery in the drive tray does that, warns you to switch to AC power when the second battery is getting low. That's all it does though,the laptop keeps on chugging. It is hot swappable with the drives. Just stuck one in a 28M that I had in front of me loading it up for a dredge job. It didn't see it. The main battery is not fully charged so that may not be it. My 28P's see it fine, but the mp light does not go on to indicate charging unless the main battery is fully charged. I haven't used it enough to know what happens when the secondary battery goes dead.

 

Mine is hot swappable, but the shut down/sleep must be disabled

i have a MK III cf-28

Greetings

Derick

 

Hi all,
My secondary battery arrived today. Replaced the floppy drive, popped in the CF-VZSU1428W, powered up and took a look into the bios to see if I needed to enable anything.

When Win2k booted up, it didn't detect a second battery nor did the little 'MP' light came on. Shut-down windows, repeated the removal/insertion process, like what Terminus did, and restarted. Nope. It isn't there... or are both batteries read as one?

Is there anything I need to look at on a CF-28MBFAZEM? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

The second battery is not compatible with CF-28M (MK1) there is a pamphlet included with new batteries that state this.

 

There wasn't any accompanying pamphlet but it'd be nice if someone can upload a copy of that so new unsuspecting users know what to expect. No harm done at my end, since it's charging nicely now in my 1ghz unit at home. I'll run a battery refresh later and see how that goes.

 

Guys, I'm at wit's end. The secondary battery refreshed ok and yield between 2.5~3hrs extra time (great actually).

When I powered up a few minutes ago, the MP LED was red. The power option detects the 2nd battery but it's crossed out. Rebooting the system, the MP LED no longer light up.

I've not done anything else with it; no reconfigure, work or surf, so... what could possibly have gone wrong? Any help or suggestions will be most appreciated.