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Wrong laptop battery charge level reported?

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I recently revamped my old laptop by installing Debian Etch with Gnome and replacing the dud battery (with a new generic cheapo from E-Bay). However, no matter how much I charge the battery, the Gnome GUI never reports more than about 47% charge. The machine's battery-level light isn't much help either; it doesn't seem to work. I can't find anything in either the Gnome power-management GUI or in /etc/apm/ or in man apmd which might allow me to configure the reported charge level.

So, does anybody know of any way that I can make a 100% charge be reported when the battery is charged as much as it will take? Or could it be that the battery is at fault, reporting the wrong information to the driver, and the driver is simple faithfully reporting what it's told?

Any clues would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Tony.

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Wrong laptop battery charge

Submitted by pinniped on Fri, 2007-03-16 17:22.

You've got to pull out the battery and take it to someone who knows what they're doing - if it's been charging for long enough that it should be fully charged, then a simple test of the voltage gives 1 indication. Unfortunately to really test it you need to somehow 'load' it (draw power) and measure the voltage under load. Definitely not recommended for just anyone to attempt because you can damage the battery (and if you have it in the computer you can damage that too). Unfortunately most computer shops wouldn't have a clue how to test batteries - but if you're very lucky you'll have a specialist battery shop nearby and they'll have just the right equipment to test it.

It is also possible that the charging circuit in your computer is faulty so you can only operate reliably with the adapter plugged in. If your battery does not charge properly in your computer but charges fine when connected to other chargers, then your computer is at fault. Unfortunately, once again, you need specialist equipment or an identical computer.

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