Long story short, my laptops DC input is no longer working. Yes, I’ve tested every aspect of the power supply. I even measured the motherboard input voltage, and it is being properly fed. I suspect a faulty DC-DC converter.
So, I had this idea of removing the battery permanently, and instead emulating it with a power supply with matching voltage. I don’t really need the battery anyway (I mostly use a laptop for the form factor).
In theory, the laptop will then think it’s running off of battery power. Permanently. Are there any consequences in terms of performance that could arise from this? Of course, the power settings will need to be adjusted, but beyond that I’m wondering if there’s a hardware aspect that I cannot control.
It won’t work, it will try, then inspect the battery for its voltage and other stats via i2c, decide the battery is unsafe, and shut itself off.
I might be wrong, but systems I’ve worked with do this because they want to make sure the battery won’t explode, they have a battery management chip, either on the motherboard or in the battery, and this tells it whether the battery is safe to use or you should shut down, and if it can’t communicate it will probably assume it should shut down.
Personally I’d solder a new barrel connector on, or figure out where the dc-dc converter is and either replace it or backfeed.
It may be possible to get past that, I’ve seen people disassembling the battery to get the BMC and connecting the DC power supply to that instead.
It sounds way more risky than OP’s initial idea. I wouldn’t recommend taking apart batteries.
Yeah, none of this sounds like a recipe for anything except fire.
I’ve taken apart laptop batteries. It isn’t that hard, but what op wants to make happen seems like a ton of sketch work.
If it’s from the last few years and the barrel input has an adjacent usb-c port it may accept usb power delivery
The port may not even be labeled for it
It just so happens that there’s a USB-C close to ir, but I think that’s just a coincidence as this laptop eats a lot more than even the beefier USB chargers. 20V, 14A. Some sort of square 4 pin connector I haven’t seen elsewhere.
ouch, usb c caps out at 100W afaik
The standard is up to 240w now
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You get to add “Electrician” to your CV. Its the law.
Bomb technician too giant lithium pouch batteries are no joke.
Fun fact: I work with both electrical systems and lithium batteries as part of my IT job. Yeah, it’s a weird combo, I know. And I’m certified in neither.
Also, I’ve blown up a lithium battery on purpose at work as part of a battery safetydemonstration.
I would go with “electrical engineer” because the solution is non-standard and hella sketchy.
The consequences is that the laptop battery percentage will not be accurate
they gotta write a script to make the battery % display the infinity symbol ha
Good idea. That is exactly what I’m gonna do if this works.
“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.”
Set-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons” -Name “Battery” -Value “C:\Path\To\InfinityIcon.ico”
Change the path to what ever the infinity .ico icon is going to be. Edit: …oh you’re on Linux. Hang on, that’s way easier lol. Use custom themes.
Since laptops are equipped with a battery anyway, they lack of a coin cell (mostly a CR2032 cell) to keep track of time. This means that your laptop will not be able to estimate the correct time and date when powered with energy outside of the original battery, and these settings have to be made manually each time your laptop will be used.
It will work fine without the correct time set, but you might have issues with files that are created “in the future” (from your laptops perspective).
I have an old laptop (still in use occasionally, because I have a scanner that is too old to be operated with current software) where I replaced its battery once. The sign the battery was dead was that the OS issued a warning the laptop was not able to tell the correct time.
A lot of laptops still have a coin cell
Really? My laptop doesn’t. Maybe it depends on if the battery is designed to be removed by customer or if it is hidden inside the laptop, making it accessible only with tools.
that’s more likely the deciding factor yeah
that and whether or not you’re me. I always seem to have the bad luck that whatever model want to buy doesn’t have a coin cell lolActually even a lot of laptops with non easily removable laptops still have coin cells. My work requires me to sometimes to repairs and I’m surprised by how common it still is
I was surprised to stumble across a BIOS battery yesterday when I was taking out the drives to copy out some data, so I guess that aspect of it all is OK.
If you are as handy as you say you are, just solder in a new jack. I’m guessing this is a Lenovo Legion based on the voltage. They are replaceable. I work in a PC shop and do them all the time.
He did say the jack is working, likely culprit is dc-dc converter, which is harder to replace.
Ooh, yeah, that changes things a bit for sure. I have seen services for motherboard repair on eBay. Maybe that’s worth a look?
It really depends on the laptop. A lot of laptops, if they can’t communicate to the battery they won’t use it. It might piss off the charging circuit as well. You might be able to bypass boot warnings or errors with settings in the BIOS.
You could always try to inject the right voltages further down the bus but you’re starting to get into dicey territory.
Maybe see if you can eBay a parts machine.
It may be easier to supply DC power directly to the soldering joints (at the right values after the converter) or even replacing that one component as using the jack itself.
That was my first idea, but I couldn’t identify any good solder targets.
