Found this cute little guy. Battery bms seems to either be dead or cell voltage too low. Has anyone in the Linux community revived a BMS before or recharged from zero?
michael MJD, is that you?
I’ve revived a Dell Venue battery the laptop reported as dead. Connecting several alkaline batteries in series to provide a voltage slightly higher than the Dell battery’s rated voltage and using them charge the Li-ion battery did the trick. After charging the Dell battery for about 10 minutes I reinstalled it, the laptop recognized it and it worked normally from that point on.
Did you Hackintoshed it? Because it looks like it’s booting MacOS.
My dad did in 2011. Wikipedia says this is a popular model to Hackintosh.
I love netbooks. I regret selling mine after Archlinux went 64bit only. It was beautiful (all pearly white) and small and the keyboard was perfectly usable even for my fat fingers.
What’s that apple doing there? That’s vile.
If you think the battery isn’t just dead dead dead and resetting the on-battery chip somehow can help, I’d like to know how, too.
Mac OS X was installed in 2010/2011. Back when people didn’t hate Apple.
Oh I see. I don’t hate apple, it just seemed like an extremely bad choice to install it now on a 15yo device. Or bad taste to have mock boot screen.
But this is fascinating.
Does it work?
Whatever happened to netbooks, they were sweet. The closest we got today is chromebooks and they can’t do shit
Chuwi makes a 10" laptop with an N150 processor that runs Linux really well. The early models had odd USB-C issues but the one I got this year was fine.
Ipad
You get downvoted because people here tend to dislike Apple (which is fine), but that’s actually what happened.
The iPad (and eventually Android tablets) basically ate up the market share of Netbooks very quickly. Steve Jobs introduced the iPad as a Netbook alternative as a device class between a smartphone and a (full-sized) notebook/desktop.
https://www.cnet.com/science/apples-ipad-nabs-netbook-market-share/
We’ve got a bit of a resurgence with small n100 based machines coming out of China sadly the bigger names just aren’t bothered thanks to the shift towards tablets and smart phones
Fuck apple.
Actually, some chromebooks can become very cool linux laptops. That means you can get a system with coreboot on relatively recent hardware (instead of a thinkpad from like 2012).
Yeah I loved my tiny netbook. They’re sorta eaten up by tablets now though. GPD’s stuff counts as netbook form factor right?
smartphones
I still have 2 netbooks… Both with cracked screens haha
I just remembered something - often (and more likely the older the device is) - the battery consists of an array of standard cells which can be bought separately. So if you feel adventurous you can pry the battery open, unsolder the cells, test each one separately - chances are there’s just one that’s completely dead, thus making the whole thing unusable.
With a bench power supply (or a similar ghetto version, that is any lion charger plus leads) you can charge single cells even while they’re connected in series. That’s how battery balancing works
I’d start with very low amps and maybe low voltages too to revive them
I remember hearing that you can’t solder batteries normally though and that a special technique is needed to heat them minimally. Is this true?
De-soldering should be ok to start with. Yes, I have heard that too. I’m guessing the “special technique” just means that you make sure the battery does not get too hot. Special tin might be required (that melts earlier).
i have dissasembled batteries to recharge the 81650 cells inside then reassemble. If they drop below a certain threshhold then the protection circuit won’t charge them. I have a special charger/tester for lithium cells and a battery tab welder. It’s only worth it if the replacement is unavailable and it’s for something very rare.
The annoying thing is, a lot of modern battery protection circuits will brick themselves once they read a too low battery voltage. So not only will they not charge anymore, they will never charge, even with new cells. It’s so dumb and meant to prevent 3rd party refurbished battery packs.
I see mint overflowing… so mint it is.
I’ve got news for you, that’s slime not mint.
This model appears to be 15 years old. The battery is just dead and won’t hold a charge at this point I’d imagine. No replacement out there is going to be worth the risk in buying. At least it still works when plugged in I guess?
There’s a trick I learned for drone lipo batteries where if you have low cell voltage, you can set your charger up to charge a different battery chemistry, I think NiMH but don’t quote me on that, charge it for a little bit and then switch it back to lipo mode. No idea if it would work here.
Nice trick but there’s a reason the charger is designed to not do what you’re getting it to do. Preventing explosions and such. I’d recommend looking up why/how the chemistries are different at low voltage so you can ride the line more safely
Absolutely. I’ve only done it once or twice, just long enough to get the one low cell voltage high enough to switch back to lipo mode. Also, all the lipo charging I do is inside of a steel ammo can. My drone buddy teases me about it but I don’t care, big and/or lipo batteries are fucking scary.
The ammo can is a solid idea, wish I thought of that myself. That would raise the safety factor enough for me to give it a try once or twice as well. Still, covered outdoors area or similar. Agreed on having a healthy fear/respect for big cells, it’s wild how much power we can fit in a battery these days and even more so to watch it escape.
If you try the ammo can idea make sure you poke a hole in it otherwise you run the risk of it becoming a bit of a pressure vessel.
I still have my old HP Mini311 netbook, AntiX or Linux MX 32bits works well on it.
