cf28 batteries... scrap?

ok so i have a whole butt load of cf28s and about 95% of them have bad batteries (red blinky light) is there a way i can refurbish them myself or should i just give them to some recycling center. After I re-image all of the computers i will have some spare time so I could prolly get them done if someone could point me in the right direction

 

You can replace the lithium ion cells, but it's an advanced procedure. You probably don't want to do it.

If you are curious, google "replace lithium ion cells" and read a few pages...

 

Hoo boy...

Another uninformed response from the Forum Divers/Dell Division...

Panasonic uses a "Smart" chip in their battery packs; once the pack goes RED/BLINKY, even replacing the cells with brand new ones will not make the pack read as good; the chip needs to be reprogrammed.

We've spent a lot of time trying to find a workaround for this to no avail; we know it CAN be done - search forum for threads containing batteryrefill.com.

We don't, however , have the specialized hardware/software to reprogram the batteries once the cells are replaced. For guys like batteryrebuild.com who do it for a living, it's cost-effective since they'll use the technology to rebuild many packs; for us as tinkerers, it quickly becomes less expensive and stressful to simply buy new packs.

mnem
Wingnuts of the world... FLY!

 

Ouch!

 

Woops... guess I'm a bit prickly there...

We get a lot of people who monitor the "Fresh Meat" tab on the site and just jump into a question without actually knowing the answer as it relates to ToughBooks; they're a strange creature, and the answers that fit Dell\HP\ASUS\EveryOtherBrand often DON'T work with ToughBooks since they design things VERY differently.

Case in point - when was the last time you had a Dell replaced/repaired under warranty because it died after you poured a glass of water in it? (Yes, I know Dell NOW offers a "ruggedized" laptop... after having 10 years of ToughBooks to dissect, I'd guess they should be able to come of with SOMETHING SORTOF LIKE IT...)

mnem<~~~One hoopy Frood~~~*

 

I really like you guys... haha. thanks for the input

 

I just laugh when I see the "Other" guys responses to a Toughbook problem... THESE ARE NOT DULL/ASUS/IBM/ETC LAPTOPS!

<Stepping down from soapbox>

Psycho... There was talk on a Wiki about trying to reprogram the chip inside the battery. Before I played around with rebuilding them in earnest... I went ahead and built a battery tab spotwelder. While that part of it was a learning experience... My batteries STILL flashed red.

My advice?

-- Either learn how to reprogram them (and of course share your knowledge here!)

-- Email a few of the battery rebuilders online... They may be worth a few bucks for their "core" value. I know if you buy a new battery from some online you have to send them your dead battery or they charge you an additional $30! Might be worth some money! (Again... Share!)

-- "Donate" them to a landfill. PLEASE make sure that whoever takes them knows that they are lithium-ion batteries. They contain some very nasty stuff.

< Pats the guard dwagon on the head on the way out... >

 

Oh heavens no - DON'T take them to the landfill; they will almost certainly bury them, no matter what they say otherwise. If you go to any BestBuy, CostCo or OfficeMax, (Prolly a number of other large retailers who sell lots of electronics, too) they'll have a standee for battery recycling somewhere. Just ask. The companies that operate those standees are requred by law to actually recycle batteries dropped in them; I imagine now that The George is gone, we may actually have some teeth in those laws again...

mnem<~~~Recycle-Dwagon~~~*

 

Dwagon makes good point!


< Pets Dwagon again... >

 

You can even drop them off at your local Target store at the service desk, they have a battery recycling program most people don't know about

 

does this smart chip have some kind of EPROM or some kind of RAM memory card in it. I ask because i have some experience in getting into that kind of memory on the TI calculators and resetting it so the calculators won't freeze up anymore. any information you already have on them like schmatics and such would make my efforts less futile

 

That deafening silence you hear is the Cyber-Equivalent of a "look like a tree full of owls". Believe me, if we had access to that kind of development-level technical knowledge, there would be a dozen peeps here trying to hack those batteries... at 100 bux or more each, there's a lot of incentive there.

mnem
Save a dwagon - harpoon a neo-con.

 

fair enough i figured that since i was a newbie to the toughbook world that maybe ya'll could gimme some pointers but that's all gravy. I work best under pressure

 

I've been doing some research on this.

The batteries hopefully follow the 'Smart Battery Specification' which uses SMBus to communicate with the rest of the system.

There are some general specs here:
http://sbs-forum.org/specs/sbdat110.pdf

SMBus uses the IIC (aka I2C) bus specification so the interface hardware is completely standardised.

I have a nearly-dead CF-28 battery I intend to disect and see exactly what controller is used internally.

 

Hi Robert,
I also have a few dead soldiers to disect..
And, I've also been working on a serial interface to poll the chip for info.
Thank you for that bit of info, I too am hoping that they used something familiar.
This will help a bunch to find the correct spot to edit..
Regards
Chuck

 

Well I have about 15-20 CF-28 batteries that I would LOVE to rebuild and already have the batteries to do it... I just need the software to reset them. So if anyone finds out how.... Please post the info!

Obviously it can be done since there are several companies out there doing it.

 

I've now pulled my old CF-28 battery apart.

It has two main ICs plus a serial EEPROM.
The ICs are: AS364D and BH7540AFS plus SL394 EEPROM.

I cannot find any useful info on the main chips...
I did find this site, which is discussing the CF-28 battery and has some excellent photos of the dismantled controller board.
In Russian, Google translation:

http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...esnum=2&ct=result&prev=/search?q=AS364D&hl=en

I've also obtained a 'battery reset' tool. This supports quite a few chipsets but does not mention the one in the CF-28 battery. I've not built the hardware interface yet so don't know if it will understand the battery.

If anyone else has had one of these apart I'd be interested to know if it has the same chipset or other types.

One tip from the software info is that the battery controller must never be completely disconnected from supply voltage or it may never work again.

For anyone experimenting, I would suggest something like connecting a 12V external power supply via 100 Ohm 1W resistors (one in each lead) to the controller board battery terminals before disconnecting the battery cells.

This should keep the controller running while avoiding any dangerous currents in either direction. As each lead is removed at the battery end, insulate it to avoid any chance of shorts.

These batteries are definitely rather volatile! While splitting the casing I managed to fractionally nick the end of one cell. The only reason I knew was when I heard a hissing or whistling noise after a few minutes, one cell was getting hot and there was a pinprick mark under the end of the paper wrap with gas coming out at a high rate! I chopped the links to the rest of the pack and put the damaged cell safely outside..

 

sounds like you had an interesting adventure with that battery. I am quite hesitant in messing with these things seeing how i don't like explosions, but i have a very steady hand so I think i can avoid any mishaps (knock on wood). would you happen to be able to send me that reset software you found. I may be able to set up some sort of interface to the cf28 battery. whatever I discover I will share with everyone on the forum.

 

Hi Robert,
I read that link (thanks BTW) thoroughly and believe that they got one for a m34 reflashed ok, I am not sure but it almost seems they took a new batteries flash (the host) to use as a new flash or for compare to find the bytes to change,dunno.
Also, seems they found out the firmware was written non-standard.
Perhaps its the same for a 28 battery.
Anyhow, my boards match theirs ok. so we'll see.

Chuck

 

I can tell you for fact that the "don't remove the batteries" part of that reference is bogus; hoping to "reset" the board by draining all residual voltage, I've DELIBERATELY removed these control boards from the battery pack for days with NO CHANGE IN STATUS whatsoever.

Packs which originally read 1/2 capacity showed the same capacity after, even with brand new cells & running the battery refresh program 10 times; while "red blinkys" behaved the same even after a week disconnected & then new cells.

If I remember correctly, the issue with the pack "Never working again" is related to the use of a special bipolar current protector (A really fancy fuse); it is designed to fuse both legs if either the load current or the charge current is excessive. A very close to dead 18650 can draw twice the allowed current for several seconds when first hooked up, and you only need ONE such cell to exceed that current limit & blow that fuse; this results in a "dead pack".

mnem
My 2 bytes worth.

 

Is this fuse so fancy that we can't just bypass it in a way and better yet do u know where this fuse is located on the boards, i tore one apart the other day and see the boards you are talking about but I can't really tell what anything is other than the obvious plugs on it (duh)

 

Umm, yeah, it kindof is. It incorporates two fusible elements and two resistive elements, which the board can monitor to see if safety has been compromised.
The issue with the fuse is not that it causes the initial failure but rather that people who don't know what they're doing often short a cell out while they're jacking around with the disassembled pack and blow that fuse.

You don't WANT to bypass that fuse, because it is ALSO your only protection against fire in the case of a runaway current or thermal overload situation. (Remember all those cell phones blowing up and burning people because of cheap, underprotected Chinese & Korean batteries? Imagine that, only 20 times larger, and BTW - it's sitting in a magnesium alloy box)

Li-Ion cells can burn explosively if shorted for any period of time; even a momentary short can damage their charge capacity enough to make the battery pack think it has a defective cell - which, actually, it does.

Just make sure you charge the new cells and build all the interconnects BEFORE you connect the new pack and it won't be an issue; of course, if you short something while soldering the final tabs to the board you still run the risk of nuking that fuse.

mnem
Can you say BOOOM, boys and girls?

 

The software I've got to try to work with the batteries is called AccPlus from http://www.microsys.ro/accplus.htm

It needs a simple interface building to connect the parallel port to the battery via IIC bus, which I have not done yet so I have no idea if it will actually communicate with the battery.

Once registered you get an extra utility designed to read & write the eeprom, theoretically allowing you to copy the parameters from a good battery to a dead battery. This is the bit that seems chipset dependent and the one in the CF-28 battery is not listed, so again it may be a waste of money.

The other program that gets a lot of mentions (used in the Russian article) is Smart Battery Workshop from http://sbworkshop.com./

This uses the same hardware interface, appears to support more chipsets but is rather more expensive.
I've just read the docs for this, their reset method is to disconnect the cells from the controller and re-write the eeprom.

The 'Must disconnect' or 'Must NOT disconnect' may depend on the type of chipset in the battery. I have seen quite a few bits of commercial electronics where a control program is loaded in RAM and the item is rendered useless if it ever loses it's backup supply. Hopefully this is something that has been phased out as it's a real pain..

 

haha yeah I get ya but I just used very poor wording on that. What I meant was a cost effective replacement. short out your toughbook battery and you get a very very expensive flashbang-fragmentation grenade

RJ- Cool little programs, when I get back to my workshop bright and early tomorrow morning I will start playing around with these new toys and if they end up being a waste of time I will just have to claim them as a tax right off.

 

whilst I was waiting for my other cf28s to reimage, i played with the 2 programs to see if they will read the batteries. Now my question is do i run the programs with a battery in a toughbook or do i have to connect to the battery via some external cable and if so where do I get said cable. running the program with the battery inside the toughbook the batteries won't even show up as existing on the program so i'm sure i'm doing something wrong. maybe I just have to get more familiar with toughbooks and these programs.

 

Both programs communicate with the battery via an external interface.

The schematic is supplied with the docs for both programs, it consists of a 7405 and a few resistors on the parallel port.

 

ok well that makes sense lol. i guess i should read all the documentation first, eh?