pastor@PRC.Unisys.COM (Jon Pastor) (01/22/91)
I just spoke with Toshiba's tech people (1-800-999-4273). According to the
person I was speaking with, they suggest charging up the machine at least
once a week if you have hardRAM; if you're going to have to go more than a
week between fillups, back up hardRAM and don't expect it to be there when
you come back (although there's no reason to expect it to go at any
particular time). I don't have my user manual here, so I can't check this
against the specs.
I asked, while I had them on the line, whether it hurts to (1) charge up
before running the battery all the way down or (2) leave it plugged in for
extended periods. The answer to (1) was, as expected, that NiCd batteries
do not take kindly to partial charges [in case you didn't know, they develop
a "memory" for the partial charge and lose their ability to take a full
charge; this is reversible, I believe, by a couple of
full-discharge/recharge cycles]. Let your batteries run all the way down as
often as you can before charging, rather than charging after each use. BTW,
"all the way down" is apparently "until it starts beeping at you".
The answer to (2) was that they do not recommend leaving it plugged in all
the time, but extended charging ("a couple of months") will not do any harm.
In summary, discharge fully, and let the machine come up to a full charge
without worrying about overcharging, but don't leave it plugged in forever.
Another question I asked was about third-party memory: would it damage my
machine? The answer was "highly unlikely". I have seen third-party memory
much cheaper than Toshiba memory, which lists for $999.
I asked about disk drives. The Toshiba floppy lists for $499; there are
20/40/100/200 MB hard drives from Axonix that hook onto the parallel port,
with the 20MB listing for $799; and a 20MB from Weltech (sp?) that goes on
the serial port for about $1100. I didn't ask about third-party floppies,
under the assumption that they were not going to give me another source for
things they'd like to sell me.
I did get a useful piece of advice on third-party hardware. Toshiba will
honor warranty repairs on machines that have third-party stuff installed
*PROVIDED* that the third-party stuff didn't cause the damage. If you buy
and install third-party stuff, get a written commitment from the
manufacturer that they'll repair any damage caused to your machine if
Toshiba refuses to do so. Right. That's the old single-source/
multiple-source dilemma, and will be easier to talk about than to do, but at
least you don't have to rip out your Megahertz modem if you floppy drive
flakes out so Toshiba won't see non-Toshiba hardware and void your warranty.
Although it would be interesting to see what they'd do about a memory error
in resident RAM if you also had a third-party RAM card...
Also, in the unlikely event that anyone else got a wrong steer from his/her
dealer, there are factory authorized service centers other than the one you
have to mail your machine to. In fact, I found one about two miles from
home.
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Jon Pastor pastor@prc.unisys.com
Unisys Corporation ..!{psuvax1,sdcrdcf,cbmvax,bpa}!burdvax!pastor
PO Box 517, Paoli PA 19301 215-648-2769 (o)limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Hui Lin Lim) (01/23/91)
To add to the ongoing discussion about battery life on the T1000s. Has anyone noticed that occassionally the battery will get much hotter than usual? It's as though the charger &/or system didn't realise that the battery is close to fully charged and forgot to switch to trickle charge. The battery light stays orange rather than switching to green. I haven't been able to figure out what causes this to happen (some combination of the battery being completely flat, the system not knowing the battery state (??? on the pop up screen), and whether you try to charge in one go or disconnect and reconnect the charger halfway thru). Could anyone offer any help? I had this happen on the J3100 (Japanese market version of the 1000SE) and it ruined the battery before I noticed.... HuiLin Lim limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com
bac@mips.com (Bruce Clarke) (01/31/91)
In article <90002@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com>, limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Hui Lin Lim) writes: |> To add to the ongoing discussion about battery life on the T1000s. Has |> anyone noticed that occassionally the battery will get much hotter |> than usual? It's as though the charger &/or system didn't realise |> that the battery is close to fully charged and forgot to switch to |> trickle charge. The battery light stays orange rather than switching |> to green. |> |> I haven't been able to figure out what causes this to happen (some |> combination of the battery being completely flat, the system not |> knowing the battery state (??? on the pop up screen), and whether |> you try to charge in one go or disconnect and reconnect the charger |> halfway thru). |> |> Could anyone offer any help? I had this happen on the J3100 (Japanese |> market version of the 1000SE) and it ruined the battery before I |> noticed.... |> |> HuiLin Lim |> limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com I have also noticed this recently on my T1000LE. So it appears that what- ever is causing it has not been corrected. So far I have been lucky and have caught it before any noticeable damage has occurred, but it does get old having to "watch" your batteries charge. I would also be very interested if anyone knows of causes/solutions to this problem. Bruce Clarke Email: bac@mips.com
dlow@pollux.svale.hp.com (Danny Low) (02/01/91)
>(Bruce Clarke) >I have also noticed this recently on my T1000LE. So it appears that what- >ever is causing it has not been corrected. So far I have been lucky and >have caught it before any noticeable damage has occurred, but it does >get old having to "watch" your batteries charge. I would also >be very interested if anyone knows of causes/solutions to this problem. According to Toshiba, the heat is normal and all Toshibas AFTER the 1000 have safety circuits to limit the heat. The problem is caused by recharging a battery that still has a substantial charge in it. I only recharge when my battery is really low so I have never noticed this problem. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP CPCD dlow@pollux.svale.hp.com
limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Hui Lin Lim) (02/01/91)
With reference to my earlier notes regarding batteries overheating, tonys@Corp.Sun.COM (Tony Scott) was kind enough to give me more info. Basically the problem seems to stem from the fact that the control of the charging current is (apparently) done by the PC itself and it uses the "value" of the battery gauge to determine when it should switch to trickle charge mode. As a result, if the PC doesn't know the state of the battery (if you've just put it in or if the PC hasn't been used for so long that all the batteries are completely flat), then it may allow the "quick charging" to go on for too long (and the battery LED will stay orange). Tony also pointed out that dead or half dead batteries will not charge if you tell the system that the battery is fully charged. Therefore (assuming that all the above assuptions are indeed correct) you should set the battery gauge to a higher value than what you believe the battery to be charged to and let the PC figure out the correct value (as it does when the battery gets low). Hope this helps those who've been sending me mail.. HuiLin limhl@hpsgm2.hp.com
pastor@PRC.Unisys.COM (Jon Pastor) (02/06/91)
>In article <90002@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com>, limhl@hpsgm2.sgp.hp.com (Hui Lin Lim) writes: >|> To add to the ongoing discussion about battery life on the T1000s. Has >|> anyone noticed that occassionally the battery will get much hotter >|> than usual? It's as though the charger &/or system didn't realise >|> that the battery is close to fully charged and forgot to switch to >|> trickle charge. The battery light stays orange rather than switching >|> to green. >|> >|> I haven't been able to figure out what causes this to happen (some >|> combination of the battery being completely flat, the system not >|> knowing the battery state (??? on the pop up screen), and whether >|> you try to charge in one go or disconnect and reconnect the charger >|> halfway thru). >|> I just talked to Toshiba tech support again. According to the woman I spoke to, the charger uses a change in the rate of charge to determine when to switch to trickle -- it has no way of knowing how much of a charge is left on the battery, so what else could it do? THEREFORE, if you plug in with an almost fully-charged battery, it's going to try to pump electrons in until it sees a marked dropoff in charge rate. Oops... The solution is (you guessed it) let your battery run down before plugging in. Sigh. There is a way to trick the charger, however, but it involves removing the battery, reinserting it, and going into the popup menu and pushing the charge indicator to 'F' -- this will apparently tell the charger not to bother. If I remember correctly, there is no other way to get the battery indicator to go to "????" and be sensitive to the arrow keys, other than popping the battery. BTW, I asked her for her opinion on using a resistor to discharge. She said that they know people do it, it usually works, but if you don't do it right you'll ruin your battery. I assumed that "doing it right" meant not draining the battery completelly, but I didn't ask. When I asked her for an approved method of discharging the battery, she suggested removing it from the machine for a day or so. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Pastor pastor@prc.unisys.com Unisys Corporation ..!{psuvax1,sdcrdcf,cbmvax,bpa}!burdvax!pastor PO Box 517, Paoli PA 19301 215-648-2769 (o)