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restoring Li Ion batteries

Hiya all,

Has anyone ever tried restoring/rebuild/wake up Li Ion batteries from PowerBooks? I have a few of PowerBook batteries and recently I got one battery brought back from dead and others aren't working at all.

Someone advised to jump start/shock start the batteries with small spike charge to get them woken up.

Well aware - it could be dangerous procedure, he used an old galvanised toolboxn incase it explodes.

Cheers

AP

 
Because of their sensitivity and volatility vs. lead acid, NiCD, or NiMH-based batteries, LiIon packs require management chips to monitor various parameters such as temperature, charge and discharge voltages, and charge cycles. Some of these management chips will disallow charging once cell voltages go too low and/or charge cycles exceed a certain value, and there's no way to reset them; the packs are rendered effectively useless. Someone with more specific knowledge may be able to comment on specific battery packs, such as those from a 3400 maybe being more receptive to rebuilding vs. a late PGB4 pack, but generally they should be replaced rather than re-celled. 

 
Bummer.  I am in need of a G3 Wallstreet and a Lombard battery and they are impossible to find as it seems no one makes a replacement.

 
Because of their sensitivity and volatility vs. lead acid, NiCD, or NiMH-based batteries, LiIon packs require management chips to monitor various parameters such as temperature, charge and discharge voltages, and charge cycles. Some of these management chips will disallow charging once cell voltages go too low and/or charge cycles exceed a certain value, and there's no way to reset them; the packs are rendered effectively useless. Someone with more specific knowledge may be able to comment on specific battery packs, such as those from a 3400 maybe being more receptive to rebuilding vs. a late PGB4 pack, but generally they should be replaced rather than re-celled. 


Some batteries have an EEPROM and you can "revirginize" a smart battery pack. ONCE you replace the cells, that is. Newer batteries are I2C/SPI SMBus and special software can be used to reset the microcontroller. Older batteries, need to be more invasive. 

 
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