Rebuilding a Li-Ion Battery?

[Goanna]

I was given a Compaq TC1000 tablet pc to play around with and I have discovered the main battery is dead. The tablet will only work when plugged in and the battery will not accept a charge.

I can find the battery on ebay for about 70 bucks with shipping. Not bad for a laptop/tablet battery but I would rather put as little money as possible into this thing as the specs arent too impressive.

The tablet is only a 1GHz w/ 256mb of pc133 ram. I can upgrade the ram to a total of 756mb (Probably could get a full gig in if I took the whole tablet apart (the 256mb stick it comes with isnt accessable from the memory cover).

I have seen some articles on taking laptop batterys apart and replacing the cells. I was curious if anyone has tried it and what your experiances were. If I can save money I would rather do it that way. I am good with soldering and have plenty of experiance with Lion and Lipo batteries from building packs for all my RC cars/helis.

Anyone know a good place to by the cells from if I want to try this?

[jeremy]

I want to try this too, I have an old Toshiba Satellite and the battery barely gives a charge.!!

[jeighty7]

I saw a website where they did this a while ago. The only thing I remember was they got the cells off ebay.

I plan on doing this with my laptop. 45 minute charge is useless. well, pretty much...

[Goanna]

Originally Posted by jeighty7

I saw a website where they did this a while ago. The only thing I remember was they got the cells off ebay.

I plan on doing this with my laptop. 45 minute charge is useless. well, pretty much...

It's too bad I couldnt just use NiMh cells instead. Cheaper then Lipo, easier to work with, and not to mention I have a pile of 2800mah ones sitting in a drawer, lol.

The charging circuitry in the laptop probably wouldnt know what to do with NiMh cells though since it's designed for li-ion.

I still gotta crack the battery open to see what kinda cells are in it. If it's AA sized cells like I have been seeing in some online tutorials then ill defintly be looking around on ebay for them.

[jeremy]

Mine's NiMH??! if its the size of AA.. well I have some lying around here!! That sounds cool

[Goanna]

Even if the size isnt exactly the same, if they output 1.2v each you can rebuild your pack with rechargeable NiMh AA cells as long as they fit back in the case properly.

I got mine taken apart and it's Panasonic CGA10345 Lithium Ion cells inside. Unfortunatly I havent been able to find anyone selling them yet. I might have to give in and buy the replacement pack. I found one on ebay for 60 bucks shipped.

EDIT: Oh well I have in and ordered the replacement since I couldnt find the OEM cells available anywhere.

I do have an older compaq notebook as well that needs some updating. I may have to take that one apart and see what I can do .