Replacing battery damaged charging circuit in CF-53? - How to diagnose/repair

Hi Folks - I've got a problem with my CF-53 and hoping someone can give me some advice here:

Yesterday I got a new battery for my CF-53 as old one was only lasting 2-3 hrs between charges

Old battery was a Panasonic CF-VZSU72U (4500mAh) and I replaced it with a genuine Panasonic CF-VZSU46 (8550mAh).

I powered the laptop down, swapped batteries, powered up into Win7 and tried to run the Panasonic battery conditioning utility but it said no battery was present. Cycled power and tried to run the utility from F9 on bootup, still no dice. Tried to let it charge, just in case the new battery was severely depleted, but got the red flashing battery light after a few minutes.

I figured that I must have got a dud battery, so put back the old battery which still had a decent charge, but got the exact same response. The laptop doesnt seem to recognize any battery now. It powers up fine with the AC adaptor, but not with either battery.

Looking at the battery connector pins inside the laptop, they look fine. I hit them with some contact cleaner just to be sure but that didnt help.

The only things I can think of that could account for this is (a) perhaps the new battery had some excessive static charge on it that killed the charging circuit (even though it came in sealed static bag). Or something in the charger circuit was already getting ready to fail and the "snap" of inserting a new battery into the chassis pushed it over the edge (seems unlikely though - these things are built fairly well).

I'm hoping that someone else has a better possible explanation - one that I might be able to recover from, as I really need the battery to be working.

Failing that, how difficult it is to replace the battery connector on the the CF-53? There is a CF-53 tear down video on youtube, but it doesnt really address whether the backplate comes off by itself and whether anything can be accessed by just taking off the backplate. It starts from the front and looks like it involves considerable work before getting to the charging circuit. There is also a CF-30 video, that shows that the backplate comes off and battery connector can be accessed with relatively reasonable effort, however that's a different model. Anyone replace a battery connector on a CF53? How much of a PIA was it?

This is my 3rd toughbook and I've replaced the batteries on all of them now. First time that I've run into anything like this

Thanks in advance for any advice - Kevin

 

do a search on here for power pull reset.
try doing that first.

 

Thanks Shawn. I searched for "power pull reset" found following instructions:

1. Pull battery.
2. Dis-connect power supply.
3. Hold switch on for 20 seconds...repeat several times.
4. Plug in power supply. (not the battery yet)
5. [F2] [F9] [F10] (boot to bios, set to defaults, save)

I followed the above instructions, powered down, re-inserted the battery and powered back up
Still no dice.
I tried this several times, with new and original battery, and with and without the power supply still plugged in when I re-inserted the battery (with the unit powered down when I swapped the battery in and out in either case)

Anything else I'm missing here?

I found a CF-53 bottom plate on Bob Johnson's parts list for CF-53 and it looks like the bottom plate is the whole chassis - it doesnt come off by itself like the CF-30. So it looks like the only way to get to the battery connector is to do a compete tear down which looks like a huge PIA

Any other way to get a CF-53 to recognize the battery?

Thanks

 

Teardown of a CF 53 is a big project. Not simple like a CF 30.
It is an odd problem. I doubt that the battery connector went bad, but anything is possible especially with a CF 53.
I personally don't care for the CF 53. I find them too fragile and many have major video failures.
Anyway...
I have seen batteries that were discharged so low that the laptop did not recognize them. I have an external charger that will charge them and after that initial charge, they work fine. Maybe that was the case with your new battery and it somehow confused the motherboard.

Just had another thought. If the new battery was defective and internally shorted, maybe it blew the fuse on the motherboard for the battery. That would cause the exact problem you describe.

 

Yeah, I really hope its not a fuse, but I suppose it could be.

Shawn - Do you or anyone else have the pinouts for the CF-VZSU71U and CF-VZSU46 batteries?

Besides the power, are there any control signals for temp, voltage feedback or whatever?

I did some more research on the CF-VZSU46 and found your battery post from March 2015. It appears that using the CF-VZSU46 on a CF-53 is not Panasonic recommended practice, even though you and at least one other person have been able to make this work. Including with CF-53 MK2, which is what I have.

Lots of vendors are selling CF-VZSU46 as compatible with CF-53,

Still, this makes me suspicious. If CF-VZSU46 worked reliably with CF-52 and CF53, then why would Panasonic not advertise it as such on their site? And some vendors sell CF-VZSU46 only for CF30.

I cant believe that Panasonic would have different electrical pinouts or control signals for batteries that have the exact same physical form factor, but this could also explain why the batteries no longer work.

In this case I have a small hope that the laptop is just confused because it saw something unexpected and can be made useful again

Has anyone else had trouble using CF-VZSU46 with CF-53?

thanks!

 

I have 2 batteries for my 53. When I get off work in the morning I will check and see what they are.

 

I do not have those pin outs

 

The 2 batteries I have are CF-VZSU71U and CF-VZSU46 . Same as you..

 

@CvilleKevin
Please post photo of CF-VZSU46

 

Here's some Linux diagnostics from USB LiveUSB

Code:

acpi -b

Code:

man acpi
acpi  -V

I'm using a "46" and a 29A (CF-29 Yellow tab) and one CF-53 has gone missing. I think it has a lightweight battery in it.

I run anything within reach but am very careful when removing /inserting batteries. On one of the 53A I must hold the latch open when inserting the battery.

 

Here is a photo of my battery.


Interestingly, I contacted Panasonic customer support and they say that the CF-VZSU46 is no longer being produced and the new version is CF-VZSU46AU
However it looks like there is a date code on the side of the battery that is July 2018. So I wonder could this be a counterfeit? Or maybe that is the "good until" date and not the production date?



Thanks - Kevin

 

FYI ...That is not an original Panasonic battery. That is an aftermarket one.

 

Well it looks close but it's not the same as mine. The top sticker is going the wrong way and there is a barcode missing

 

Shawn - How can you tell that my battery is not OEM? Matsushita Electric is parent company of Panasonic.

 

Yours is a counterfeit made to look like an original Panasonic product.
The stickers are printed wrong.
It is also missing the small barcoded sticker .
The color of the blue tab is wrong also. Notice mine are opaque and I can see through yours?
Yours is missing the UL certification markings.


See the circled sticker in photo.
Your battery even has an indented place where that sticker is supposed to be.
That came from when the Chinese clone factory made a mold from an original battery.
That sticker is on EVERY original Panasonic Toughbook battery that I have ever owned.
That tells the manufacture date and probably the serial number of the battery.

 

Try a full reset. Which means you need to take all out the supply line. The main battery, unplug the AC of course and pull out the cmos battery for atleast 30 second.

Hope it helps. If your battery is displaying a flashing red. It means your battery is kapot.

ohlip

 

Hello Teo!

 

Whats up, man! been a long time and I almost forgot my pswrd here, lol...

ohlip

 

Interesting the way they covered the spot where Panasonic would have been displayed.

I found some 53 spare parts. What is your model # or mark. I'll dig the box out if you are interested.

 

I thought maybe you converted to Dell or Macs.

 

If you check the link below this is what my battery looks like. If you look hard enough you can see the difference. Wonder what's under that warranty sticker on the top...Panasonic ??

http://www.panasonic-cf-18.utisys.com/panasonic-toughbook-cf-30/cf-vzsu46u/

 

Hmm.. looks like I got sold a false bill of goods and it killed battery operation on my laptop. D#$% It!

Here are the two batteries next to each other. Yeah, very different.


I hope that Matsushita is aggressive about defending their name and marking and go after the punks that made this crap battery.

I emailed and called Panasonic tech support. They are quick to respond and nice but they wont tell me anything useful like the pinouts or why the CF-VZSU46 is not recommended for use with the CR-53. They wanted over a c note just to have me ship it to them so they can look at it.

Probably my fastest and cheapest route back to full productivity is to buy another CF-53 move the drive and memory over. In the meantime back to CF-52 or AC cord.

Can anyone tell me do the model numbers have to match exactly to do a drive image, or is going to another mk2 or CF-53J****** close enough? (assuming loading latest drivers after image for anything that changed like WAN card, etc). Is there a sticky or post on model compatibility for drive imaging?

thanks - Kevin

edit - hmm. My counterfeit battery looks exactly like the one Toughasnails has. Except mine is on backwards and has a warranty void if removed sticker over the spot where it should say "Panasonic". Yeah, this is a suspicious place to have a 'void if removed' sticker. Its not over a seal of any kind.

Toughasnails - how old is your battery? Panasonic says they are no longer making the CF-VZSU46 battery and have replaced it with CF-VZSU46AU. Looks like someone is still making it!

 

The image will work on any CF 53 mk2 for sure.
If you buy Acronis, it has a different hardware tool that works nicely to use an image on a different machine.
With rebate it's $10.00

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832200139

 

mine is about 4 years old i think. I also noticed on your battery the lettering below the Li-ion Ni is not spaced right . The lettering is cramped together....like it was copied and pasted (Photoshop) in. The counterfeiters do a good job but they always screw up something. Sometimes its hard to tell unless you have an OEM battery in front of you. It's happened to me years ago. I never new the difference untill Rick (Toughbook) pointed it out to me that it was a knockoff CF-28 battery.

 

I tried removing the CMOS battery and shorted with a 100 ohm resistor to make sure voltage was completely depleted.

Still no dice. Still getting the red flashing LED and no battery detected.

I took the batteries into work where I have some needle probes to check the voltage and pinouts. My original battery had 10.95 volts between - and +, so a bit over nominal

The counterfeit battery had 11.51v. That seems high for a laptop battery especially for one with a nominal voltage of 3.55vpc. It certainly wasnt shipped with no charge on it. I know that in theory, lithium cells will go up to 4.1 or 4.2 volts each, but I'm wondering if Panasonic intentionally keeps their batteries somewhere below 3.8vpc in order to keep them more stable at high altitudes on airplanes, etc.

That might also explain why Panasonic doesnt recommend using the CF-VZSU46 in a CF-53, because the cells in the CF-VZSU46 have a lower nominal voltage and they dont want to take a risk overcharging them

Anyone know the max fully charged voltage of a CF-VZSU72 or CF-VZSU71 is?

As far as the rest of the pins on the batteries go. All of the pins besides + and - appear to be high impedance pins with no voltage or signal on them. so not sure why Panasonic uses all these pins. Perhaps they are used for some sort of signaling

 

my 71 showed 11.85v on my cheap meter.

The lower amphour batteries are 6 cell and the higher amphour ones are 9 cell

 

"my 71 showed 11.85v on my cheap meter"

Hmm. I guess 11.51v is legit then. So much for that theory. Maybe there is some sort of signaling on the middle battery pins.

Looking at a battery connector for sale on Bob Johnson's, it looks like the two power pins on the connector are slightly longer, so they are first mate, last break. That would suggest some sort of signaling on the other pins, which is probably harder to counterfeit. Once I get this sorted out, I may pull the old battery apart to see what else it contains besides the cells.

Thanks for your help everyone. Looks like I'm dragging an AC adapter around with me for a while.

 

There is a small pcb inside. It has a chip on it.

 

I checked out my CF-53 parts box. There is one cf-53 lower half with intact battery connector and no motherboard.
The case is a like new CF-53SJCZYLM.
Here's another with mobo #DL3UP2130ACA..53SSLZALM

I'm pretty sure these came to me with video problems. Being 53S I didn't think they were worth fixing. The S model seemed prone to video issues.

Pay the shipping and you can have one or more. <$20.

 

Hey Sheepman! Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on that.

First, I'm trying to get an answer out of Panasonic as to whether the counterfeit battery could have responded with a bad code or no code when it was plugged in and if that could be the reason my laptop wont recognize any battery any more. It does seem that there are some things that the CF-53 stores in flash memory (bios password, runtime hours, etc). If they store battery information in there and it got corrupted somehow, then there may be nothing that I can fix without the flash tool.

If its something that I can physically fix, I need to watch that tear down video a few more times before trying to replace that battery connector. My takeaway from watching that video the first time is that it would take me at least half a day to get to the battery connector and put everything put back, with plenty of room for mistakes along the way. I think my best bet is to try to find a used 53 mk2 in good shape and move my hard drive and memory over. Then maybe go back and see if I can fix the unit I have now. But I'm really hoping that this is just a flash problem that can fixed without a teardown

 

Agreed as far as the used MK2. Good call.
I've been running a "J" model for a looooong time. MK3 seemed to be where the issues started. My parts are from several MK 3.

Pull the keyboard bezel and inspect the visible fuses by the power port. I have a board wrapped up here. I'll take a look at fuses. Fuses have a F (number) like F11 printed on the mobo.

Here is power pull reset again.
1. Pull battery, power supply and peripherals like mouse, SD card etc.
2. Hold switch for several cycles of 30 seconds (until your finger gets tired).
3. Hook up power supply only. Battery is controlled by ACPI...using power supply only gives mobo less to sort out.
4. Re-boot with bios set to defaults at least twice. Don't touch any keys while booting.
5. If it launches THEN hot-plug known good battery.

FWIW

 

Safn1949 asks if you are using a 8A "brick" power supply. I'd forgotten that.

I wonder if the aftermarket wonder popped something in the power supply. Is that possible?????

Do you have access to one (different power supply) ? And maybe a known good battery.

I run multiple ps 7.05 or 8 amp. No heating problems.

Pulling ram one stick at a time is another idea.

 

I still feel strongly that it is a SMD fuse in the battery input line on the motherboard. They are cheap to buy and other than being tiny, not difficult to replace.

 

It runs fine off the power supply so that's not the problem. An interesting test would be to try the batteries in a different laptop. NOT A CF 53 though.
It is quite possible the fuse was weak to start with and just failed. The battery may be fine and timing of the failure was just coincidental. CF53's are somewhat more fragile than a fully rugged model.