The batteries on my Zaurus SL-C1000 failed to work, so I did some looking around and found a solution.
My battery could charge and would boot up my device. While it showed as fully charged it would "drain" extremely quickly.
Following these instructions I was able to completely resurrect one battery, but a second one did not work. That second battery had a bit of a bulge, so I'm guessing it went completely bad.
With great thanks to SWilliams: https://youtu.be/CCQU8eW3TGk
What I used ∞
- A USB cable that I was willing to destroy.
- A pair of wire cutters.
- A wire stripper.
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An external USB charger.
- It was a brick that I can plug into an electrical outlet.
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The Lithium icon battery.
Reasoning ∞
I think I could have used another way to supply power. Another power source, different cabling or the like. Because I don't know enough about this topic, I choose to follow the instructions exactly.
A wire cutter / stripper are technically not needed, but there's no way in hell I'd recommend a person prepare the cable with a knife or pair of scissors. I've done that sort of thing and it's a pain in the ass.
I used an external brick in case this managed to damage my USB port or computer. I don't think I needed to worry at all, but I would highly recommend a person use a recharge brick instead of their computer, if it's available. These are extremely cheap and I think everyone should have one laying about for other purposes. Friends with phones appreciate this, if you also keep various cables.
Warnings ∞
Lithium ion batteries contain a huge amount of energy. Fucking around can make them explode or catch on fire. I don't mean "candle flame", I mean small bonfire. This sort of thing can also damage your person. Damage not just as in burn you but as in take out an eye. Eyeglasses are not safety glasses, they don't even cover the sides.
Not only could things go bad with the battery, they could go bad if something goes awry in your device, maybe taking the device with it.
I say "can" and "could" because everything worked out for me. I wasn't exhaustive but I didn't hear a single story of anyone having any issues anything like this. Still, bear these warnings in mind. These batteries are serious science, do not piss off the gods on this one.
Instructions ∞
Cable preparation ∞
You want to keep the "male" side of the cable. This is the part which plugs into your computer.
Cut the cable in a place that gives you a comfortable length of cable. If you don't have confidence, then make the cable as long as possible. There's no harm! This way, if you make mistakes, you can always cut the cable a little shorter and try again.
Peel back the rubbery coating. Gently clip it a few times to make a bit of a notch, line or "v" shape. Keep going, gently, until you can get a good half a finger length pulled away. Feel free to clip that off.
You'll probably see other wiring or whatnot underneath. What you're interested in is getting at the black and red wires hiding within. Strip the rest away. If you have other little wires, then keep them intact. The rest don't matter, just have them out of the way enough that you wouldn't accidentally touch them. Feel free to use electrical tape if you want to re-use this cable and keep it looking good.
Strip away a little bit of the rubbery covering of the red and black wires. All you want, really, is enough so that there's a bit hanging out that you could lightly touch against your battery.
Understanding stuff ∞
Look at your battery. It may have more than one contact on it, but you are only interested in two of them. They should be labelled + and -. The + means "positive", and the - means "negative.
Your cable has two colours. Red is "positive" and black is "negative"
Battery jumpstarting ∞
Get your battery and put it somewhere convenient like on a desk.
Keep the black and red exposed ends separated. Plug the "normal" un-modified end of your USB cable into your power source (computer or power brick).
Touch the red wire tip to + (positive). Hold the wire in such a way that it stays there.
Touch the black wire tip to - (negative). Touch these wires to your battery in this order.
Wait a moment.
Pull your wires away from your battery. Keep the red and wire tips separated. Unplug your cable from your power source (computer or power brick).
Battery testing ∞
Insert your battery into your device and see if you can power it up. Your battery may legitimately have no charge, and you'd have to charge it up like you would if it were working. Give things some patience and time and re-try.
Assuming everything goes well, your battery will accept your jumpstarted battery.
Battery draining ∞
You want to drain the battery dry before charging it up again.
a) Some people go very low level and connect a fan to their battery.
b) If you are using a computer battery and can put it into your computer, then boot up with it. Boot up using a power cable if you must. Once it's booted up, it is essential to disable any sort of automatic-shutdown or hibernation. If it's a computer-type device, then it may have some software configuration for this. If you can do this, then pull the power cable and let it run on the battery. Note that your device might list your battery's power left as "very low" but it'll last a suspiciously long time. Just be patient.
Other ideas to drain power include:
- Disabling any power saving mode that may exist. Many devices do this automatically and have no such setting. This is one of the reasons some laptops are shitty gaming computers.
- Turning up the brightness and disable screen dimming.
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Playing a video or song on loop.
- Turning up the volume is also an idea, but that's pretty annoying. Even just having the audio muted but a video playing will help use the processor more, and use more power.
IMPORTANT: Don't be doing anything important, so that when your device completely shuts off without warning it won't do harm to data you might have been be working on.
c) If you can't disable hibernation, then look for a "maintenance mode". These frequently exist for technicians to "unbrick" or update a device by flashing its ROM/bios, perform kinds of testing or the like. A maintenance mode will probably give you an environment that does not have any power saving functionality at all. If you can get into one, do so and just let it sit there.
Battery recharging ∞
Once you're pretty sure your battery has been completely drained, even by trying to turn it on again and again, treat it as drained and charge it the way you normally would. If you have a separate wall or brick-charger, prefer to use that rather than put it into a device and power up the device with a cable.
It should now be working fine, charging and draining the way you expect. Your device should understand how much power it actually has, without an extended "very low" description.
Upon success ∞
If this jumpstart ends up working for you, don't forget to adjust your hibernation or brightness back to what they were.
Let me know things worked out. Drop a comment here. This was a fun project and it would be cool for people to share their own success stories.
Upon failure ∞
I don't know of anything else that can be done.
If these ideas don't work, but you find another way that does, then definitely comment here. I'd be interested to know more about this sort of thing.
Last updated 2023-08-10 at 08:10:44
