A21m Battery Issues

[thekeyser22]

Model is A21m series Thinkpad laptop.

I put the laptop to absolute full battery draining mode, cpu speed max, lcd brightness maxed, no alarms, no standby/hibernate, etc. The battery drains completely, first the screen turns off (but I can still work on the laptop through an external monitor) and then I wait for the whole thing to just drain and shut down completely...

ok so the battery is at 0%... I plug it in to charge, and it takes only 20-30 minutes for the light to turn solid green? Is that normal? Is it theoretically still charging even while the light is green? 

Other info, cycle count=91, remaining capacity~20.1Wh

I've tried charging other times, but even in super power save mode, the battery goes from 100% charge (with an estimate of 2 hours battery time) to 0% maybe within 15-20 minutes time...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ajkula66 Guru]

Chances are that your battery is old and needs to be replaced...

What's the manufacture date (available in Power Manager)?

Hope this helps. 

[thekeyser22]

yeah, it's old, 2001... I guess I'm in denial really.. I'm doing a fresh recharge now though... if that doesn't work, I might consider popping open the battery and replacing the cells, I'm fairly decent with a soldering iron and there's some thorough tutorials online

that being said, has anybody had experience prying open any thinkpad battery packs? They're sealed pretty tight I've gotta say, I've been carefully trying to open up the darned thing for an hour now..

[hollingb1]

Yes, I had success opening the battery shell.  It has no glue, only a series of pressure clips.  With careful prying, you can open it.  There is a wad of double sided tape holding one side down as well.  There are 9 battery cells, which look to be all the same, although the marking varies on some.  I think they are 18650's which can be replaced with modern 2200 or 2800 mAH cells for about $45 on ebay.  Have not done so yet, so cannot report success, but I plan to unless someone can caution me not to waste the money.