Topic: External Battery Charger wierdness

[NJAntman]

The power cord port for my wife's Toshiba laptop broke so had to get an external battery charger.

The external charger worked as advertised the first time: plugged the brick to the wall and green LED lights up to show no load, plugged the brick to the adapter cord to the drained battery and on comes the red LED to show it was charging. Two hours later the red LED flashes and shuts off and the battery is juiced up (about 90%).

Odd thing is since then it won't work unless the battery is diconnected from the laptop and plugged in to the charger within a few seconds. Anything longer and I just get a solid green LED showing no load and charging never starts even with a battery in different states of depletion.

So I ask you, what is it that about the battery or charger that causes this?

[Strat]

I can't say for sure with your particular model universal recharger / battery but:

I have used other uni-rechargers (talking 'bout a device that attaches directly to a battery and its terminals, not charging though a cell or laptop's internal mechanism). In the cases I tried them I found that they did 'work', but never worked as well as the OEM mechanism. They would only partially charge, hard to get to charge, or had other oddities. Without seeing your equipment in hand, I'd say what your describing is about similar to what I got with them.

These batteries and their chargers have their own special circuitry designed for optimum performance. Especially in the case of laptops, the batteries themselves have their own circuitry to assist charging, load, and report health. The laptop's power circuitry is designed to work with these batteries' functions. It's not so easy to just bypass it all and expect stock reliability.

Some OEM make external chargers, I'd go for that. I did a quick search and could not find one for Toshiba. Perhaps a Dock would work. If the dock has its own power port, it might be enough to power and charge the laptop and battery while docked. That I can think of.. that or get a new mainboard or laptop. I don't know your model laptop, but this dock does have its own power port, for a mere $189:
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=422067

Hope that helps,
Strat

[NJAntman]

Unfortunately we have a Satellite L650 (good machine for the money) so a dock won't work but thanks for that advice.

I figured that the damage I could do just opening the case up to see if the power receptacle could be soldered back into place wasn't worth the trouble form the Mrs. if I screwed it up so I'll keep trying diffferent things with the external charger. Its is a model HES33-S128250 from Pearly Technologies Co., Ltd. made in Taiwan but I can't find a thing on the net for that company. A company without a web-page? Now I'm concerned!

Maybe this is a Chi-com plot to sell wonky electronics to drive the rest of the world crazy?