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Battery recalibration

Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:09 pm
by Shawn
I finally did a battery recal..I did it on a media bay battery for a cf30..

Now here's the question..When the Toughbook is done getting new info from testing the battery, Does it store that info in the BIOS or in the battery itself?

Reason I ask is I switch batteries between my cf30 and cf52 regularly..If it stores it in the BIOS, I would need to do a recal for each battery on each Toughbook..

If it's stored on the battery, only once for each battery will work.

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:35 pm
by toughasnails
That's a very good question. I am starting one on my 30 now and when it's done I will try another one.

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:10 pm
by toughasnails
Shawn wrote:I finally did a battery recal..I did it on a media bay battery for a cf30..
.
If you try to do another battery recal on the same media bay battery what does it tell you ? That you don't need to ?? Why I ask is I run the battery recal on a few batteries and one I already did and it told me that it did not need to be run because it was done in the last 30 days...or something like that.
So it must read something off the battery to know this so we are back to the question...where is it stored. My guess the BIOS or some where on the HDD because if I am right, if you try the same battery in another 30 it will run the battery cal all over again without telling you it was just done. I have 2 CF-30MK3's that I will try this on. I have it running on one now so when I get up I will try it on the other and see what happens. This test should tell us if it's stored in the battery or the 30 at least :rolleyes:

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 1:29 am
by Azrial
I know when I swap batteries, it closes calibration.

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:55 am
by Shawn
It seems to store it on the drive somewhere. I setup 2 computers side by side both with ac plugged in.
I opened Panasonic info/battery tab on both.
Noted the battery specs and switched batteries. The specs were different with the batteries swapped.
The specs went back to original when I put the batteries back in the original computer.

Now the question becomes.Where is this file? Can we just delete it every so often and get "refreshed" battery condition?
I am pretty sure windows reads this file to get it's information. One site said it's the APCI driver..I dunno.

Another question..Does battery calibrate actually do ANYTHING to improve the battery itself? Or does it just EDUCATE windows as to the actual battery life?

Here is a GREAT read that confirms some suspicions of mine..Doesn't give a complete solution though.
http://www.notebookreview.com/news/is-y ... y-problem/

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 10:50 am
by SHEEPMAN!
Type acpi in Linux terminal and it tells you battery condition. Here's what happens if acpi is not installed. So, yes acpi.

Code: Select all

ka@ka-CF-30KAPAXAM ~ $ acpi
The program 'acpi' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install acpi
ka@ka-CF-30KAPAXAM ~ $ sudo apt-get install acpi
[sudo] password for ka: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  acpi
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 13.8 kB of archives.
After this operation, 71.7 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe acpi amd64 1.7-1 [13.8 kB]
Fetched 13.8 kB in 0s (30.8 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package acpi.
(Reading database ... 146384 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../archives/acpi_1.7-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking acpi (1.7-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) ...
Setting up acpi (1.7-1) ...
ka@ka-CF-30KAPAXAM ~ $ acpi
Battery 0: Discharging, 94%, 06:15:33 remaining

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:43 am
by Shawn
Thanks Birdman

My conclusion (in your words) is that all a battery recalibrate does is Drain the Stupid out of the OS and BIOS.
And Windows has lots of stupid.....

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 12:13 pm
by wyrm73
I think the drain is clogged.....

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:35 pm
by Shawn
From what I have learned. All battery recal does is teach windoze how much battery power you have left. The battery icon on the taskbar..I am now using batterycare and it keeps track of battery usage and calculates your remaining power. I had assumed battery recalibrate was like discharging and recharging a nicad..It changed how the battery worked. With a li-ion battery, battery recal does not change the actual battery at all.

Re: Battery recalibration

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:11 pm
by kode-niner
I thought that calibration was to reset the smart battery's internal SMBus fuel gauge so that it can more accurately report its state-of-charge.