Testing a New Battery for the ThinkPad 380XD from 1997

[@a_funyun]

Why, yes, I would like to watch Clint test a battery for 13 minutes, thank you youtube. Don't mind if I do.

[@meeperator]

Had almost the exact same phrase go through my mind as well. LGR? Battery for obscure specific laptop I never have, and never will, own? Oh, and it's 13+ minutes of LGR's "low effort" channel? Yes please.

[@AdCosmo]

I just like to hear him talk.

[@jeterjr28]

A gnome child wanting to watch Clint test a battery for 13 mins? Amazing haha :D

[@kingcrimson1631]

@a funyun this is why the internet was invented.

[@ryanjay6241]

I actually rebuilt the battery for my ThinkPad 701C myself. You can do it without a spot welder - all you need is a decent soldering iron and some strong flux. It makes it much easier if you sand down the smooth contacts at the end of the battery, apply flux, and then tack the solder directly to the battery. It should take without too much effort, and after that it's just a simple solder job to attach the wires. I've done it many times being lazy (don't want to wait for shipping) trying to connect a cr3032 to the existing ThinkPad CMOS battery cables that I've pulled off the dead one. The sanding down of the surface is a very critical step or the solder will not take. Those ones also get pretty hot pretty quick. But still as a warning, too much heat can make a battery go boom. You'd probably have to go at a (larger) battery for an extremely long time for anything to happen, but warning included in case.

[@KyoshoLP]

On battery meter thing: It likely calculates the capacity based on the exact voltage the battery is putting out. The cells in this "new" battery probably have much less droop and stay at a fairly consistent voltage (whatever your laptop expects for 80%) for most of their charge. And then sharply drop off. I've run into this with many devices over the years when powering them with completely foreign power sources. First time was back in the early 00s when my first cell phone's battery died and I modded it to run off AAs. It'd report being at full charge for most of its battery life and then show 1 bar of battery 5 minutes before it died.

[@zOMGREI]

There should be an option in the BIOS to recalibrate the battery charge level. I admittedly don't have a ton of experience with IBMs, but all the old Dell laptops I had back in the day needed the battery test to be run in the BIOS before it displayed the correct charge capacity whenever a different battery was put in for the first time.

[@michealpersicko9531]

@@zOMGREI I honestly think he's asking it as one of those "oh it would be nice to know.." type questions and whether or not he gets the information it doesn't really matter to him because you can clearly tell when these old machines start to die hell i notice when my battery is below a certain percentage on my smartphone just by performance before i look at the percentage.

[@spokehedz]

There are two kinds of people who tell people to "rebuild the battery!" 1. The people who have done it, and who were lucky enough to have a new enough battery that the charging circuitry matches up perfectly and there is no weird issues from it having a new chemistry in it, and now their battery is absolutely perfect and has much more capacity. 2. Everyone who watched someone do it on KZbin, and barf it into the comments section whenever a bad/non-functional battery comes up. IT AIN'T THAT SIMPLE! At least it isn't on the super old stuff, and I don't want to hear anyone say "it was super easy!" because it isn't. Even changes to battery chemistry can make the charger report wrong values--or if it even does that at all, it might be stupid and just charge at a constant (wrong) currant and/or a wrong end-voltage as well.

[@kathrynradonich3982]

Agreed it isn’t for everyone but it is a valid option. Rebuilt the battery for my 770 and it was a pain but works fine years later. Highly recommend buying the cells with the tabs pre-welded on they help a ton.

[@limera1nx]

Yeah, I've encountered battery boards that can lock itself up when the battery is disconnected

[@marquiis]

Rebuilding a battery when there is no other alternative might be really your only option, and given you got the knowledge and means it is definitely feasible. But I'd rather happily pay the high costs of this aftermarket battery rather than play chemistry and have the risks of a fire or explosion right in my desk. Batteries ain't a toy!

[@sersoft_corp]

I tried rebuilding the battery on an HP laptop and it did not like the new cells at all, it would randomly stop charging until I remove and re-install it, and would only run down to about 60% on battery. On the other hand, I rebuilt an old ASUS netbook battery and it worked absolutely perfectly. I guess it varies by manufacturer.

[@eDoc2020]

If your replacement cells are a compatible chemistry it _should_ just work. The biggest thing getting in the way is the smart protection circuits on modern batteries. In most cases the capacity reporting will be way off, like it could drop from 100 to zero in ten minutes but then keep working for hours on zero. Unfortunately this is more than just cosmetic, as usually laptops will refuse to boot if the battery reports itself as discharged. In other cases the controller will permanently disable itself if anything abnormal is detected. In these cases you _could_ reset the chip except there is approximately zero public knowledge on how to do this and it varies greatly between different batteries. And that's just some electronic issues which can happen after the swap. There's still the issue of safely performing the cell swap itself without destroying anything. But one thing I will disagree with you on: simple cell swaps are more likely to work on older stuff, not newer stuff. Old dumb Ni-MH or NiCd batteries don't have any smarts to fight you, and I think earlier smart batteries tend to be more likely to automatically adapt to new cells.

[@シルバクロウ]

I seem to recall seeing on the loaned Thinkpad video that the manual itself stated that the battery level would only be shown in multiples of 20 and while charging it would always show 80%. So I wouldn't worry about it, tbh.

[@Ariannus]

I'm just imaging Clint sitting at Starbucks surrounded by Macbooks and Ultrabooks using his Thinkpad 380.

[@michelvanbriemen3459]

And while everyone's watching KZbin and doing school work, he's playing Doom or Duke Nukem, volume maxed out

[@kbhasi]

Oh my. This reminds me of an idea I had for a Reddit "Retro Battle Stations" "Portables Week" entry, albeit with me at a local landmark. I never did take that photo as I have been busy and haven't had the time and parts needed to get my 760ED up and running.

[@hjalfi]

One day I'm planning on taking my Toshiba T3100e luggable with gas plasma screen and Alps SKFL keyswitches to my local coffee shop. If I can get a seat next to the power socket, that is.

[@the_kombinator]

Hah, I took my Compaq Armada (from 1997) on a plane to Korea and played HOMM II on it for a couple hours. I wonder what people thought about that ;)

[@MishraArtificer]

@@kbhasi I'd bring one of my Thinkpad T41s...

[@swettyspaghtti]

Clint is smiling sitting under a tree giving hearts to comments from his thinkpad

[@retro_gamer_uk]

Clint is smiling at me. Can you say the same?

[@BilisNegra]

Can't think of a way that could be technically possible, but it's fun to imagine.

[@swettyspaghtti]

@@BilisNegra UHH its possible

[@hayleyxyz]

@@swettyspaghtti sadly there are too many incompatabilities with SSL/TLS and HTML/JS/CSS for 99% of sites to work on win 95/98/2000

[@Megatog615]

@@hayleyxyz web browsers having more lines of code than operating system kernels these days leads me to believe that running one that can render a modern website is impossible in itself.

[@mruppel2]

We take for granted gaming on the go nowadays but back when this laptop was released I bet you'd be the coolest kid if you had one of these

[@mattb154]

For about five minutes until you get the site beaten out of you, and the laptop stolen.

[@dlarge6502]

In the late 90's I got a 368 laptop from one of the IT admins at school. I installed Linux on it, then ran a Gameboy emulator on it to play this weird Japanese Gameboy game called Pokémon. You should have seen the crowd of school kids this geek had around him n the library at break time.

[@i.warrenhastings2526]

The original restoration video for this IBM is one of my favorite things to fall asleep to. Probably seen it two dozen times, as well all the other LGR hardware videos. My robust circadian rhythm is greatly in your debt, good sir.

[@freddieastaire6312]

I used to have a portable media player that had an option to just charge up to 80% of it's battery capacity. The manual stated that it was to help prolong the life of the battery. Further reading, there is a 40 80 rule that exists for lithium-ion batteries, generally speaking is that you charge up only to 80% and then discharge until 40%. Hope I helped :-) Great Content as always Clint!

[@Flofutz]

I would guess as well that it is set to max out at 80% charge

[@BlueCollarBachelor]

Tesla cars do this.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Completely charging ages them. Discharging them below a certain voltage ages them. More load cycles age them. Oh, and they're temperature sensitive and can get too cold. So if your phone suddenly turns off in winter, put it in the inside pocket of your coat to warm it up with body heat.

[@feeterican]

Funny, the first time I got a (used) laptop I installed WoW and since it was the middle of summer I went out on the deck and played for hours. The sun started going to down at 7pm and I was out there until 1am. One of the most memorable gaming sessions I've ever had. Oh yeah, the laptop had a hard time playing it and on low settings it would barely stay at 60FPS and knowing that my gaming PC was inside, I didn't care, I was out side gaming.

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

I completely get the feeling about being excited over a replacement battery... I was stunned and delighted to find people selling "brand new" ribbons (new old stock) for a Commodore MPS-803 printer released back in 1985.

[@tanvach]

The 380XD was such a great laptop, amazing display for the day.

[@lakelse2]

It really was an amazing machine -- had an awesome keyboard too.

[@BilisNegra]

Thanks for the fun, hope this gets viewed enough to eventually cover the hefty price of that battery!

[@svensson2439]

Other people: I close the shutters and turn off my lights to get the right mood for Doom. Clint: I might just try to go outside and sit in the sunshine to play me some Doom. =)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Clint's mom: you can't sit inside all day playing doom Clint: plays Doom on his thinkpad in the garden

[@ReelBigMike]

2:45 The color being listed as 'Dark Gery' would've been enough of a red flag for me to not order it. Kudos to you for doing it anyway.

[@trollsthatlol1]

Question is, who is Gery anyway?

[@SenileOtaku]

It's a good thing you tested it over a period of days. I got a replacement battery for a Dell Studio 1737, and it worked fine until it ran out of charge. Then it never charged up again.

[@MrDuncl]

We had a some Toshiba laptops at work. On one the battery was always flat so I suggested they bought a replacement battery. The new battery turned up and we had exactly the problem you describe. Swapping batteries around we realised that there was nothing wrong with either battery, and that it was the charging circuit in the laptop that wasn't working.

[@AlyxxTheRat]

This was worth it just to see someone get giddy over a freakin laptop battery. We take these things for granted a lot of the time.

[@hardies1]

Clint, Usually to re calibrate the battery meter on a laptop you do the following: 1: Charge the battery to a full charge 2: Unplug the charge cord and run the laptop continuously until the battery runs out and the machine shuts off 3: Plug the power supply back in and just let the machine sit untouched and charge the battery back to a full charge. Once you have completed these steps the battery meter should be properly calibrated.

[@eekmeout]

dear clint, your last thinkpad unboxing got me thinking about how i needed a batt for my 380XD as well. i'm so glad you found them :)

[@arcanescroll]

I used to rebuild batteries for years, including these. Some batteries needed the board to be "reset" to get them to report correctly or even work at all. It involves shorting across some contacts on the board with a volt meter. It's more like glitching it than resetting it, but it works. Honestly, it's not worth the trouble unless you really need it to report correctly.

[@athf226]

This is really neat. It would be even cooler if the company offered an option with user-replaceable cells for when they inevitably die. Edit: For the meter, maybe a full discharge-charge cycle would re-calibrate it, depending on what sort of gas gauge it uses.

[@tossabaddle]

Getting battery replacements for stuff like this.. The feeling of completeness is worth every penny

[@arjanvuik2004]

Why is it so satisfying to see Clint play Doom on the go on a 24+ year laptop with a 'new' battery... love it :D

[@CommodoreFan64]

Awesome you where able to find this battery. I collect, use, and restore more modern Lenovo Thinkpads(I also have a few ACER laptops/netbooks as well which are in the same boat), and even the batteries of models from this past decade in the past couple of years have gotten harder to find, and overall more expensive when you do find them.

[@digitalsparky]

In case you'd like the old battery rebuilt as well, I recommend doing a collab with and/or sending it off to Morten @ MyPlayHouse (kzbin.info) - I'm 100% sure he can and would rebuild it for you, and make a video on it at the same time :P.

[@richardbrobeck2384]

sweet I will have to remember him

[@lightclarke8730]

He's so happy, It's making me happy XD

[@wal]

Love the blerbs!

[@kurtiuscobainius1581]

Big D! I didn't know you were interested in these things? Well cool you ar!

[@stevencarlson5422]

i absolutely love this laptop i have one and it came with a replacement battery already and still holds a great charge, i also use this laptop a lot for all my old computing needs, it helps so much to be portable just so you can easily move from place to place without worry of losing power and having to reload windows all the time

[@stevencarlson5422]

also LGR this laptop has a built in subwoofer, although its not very bassy

[@smellincoffee]

I watched half of the original this morning, paused it to go work, and returned to find the video removed. How do I know I didn't miss something super-exciting and mysterious?!

[@jansenart0]

The 18650 cell is actually remarkably common. I bought a bunch for some really REALLY cool Chinese USB LED light/battery banks to have in the home and car. Each unit came with one cell but had space for two. I can see how packing the battery would be a pain though; you'd really need more of like a cloth bag instead of a wiring harness.

[@UpLateGeek]

Wow, that's really expensive! I ordered a replacement battery for my 15" Powerbook G4 A1138, which was only $105 Aussie dollary doos. But despite their website saying it was in stock, I got an email saying that they were out of stock and they'll let me know the ETA when they find out from their supplier. It's gotta be years since these things were made, so I'm really not hopeful that they'll be able to source one. Anyway, it's still awesome that you managed to get a battery for your ThinkPad!

[@caodesignworks2407]

Hey, it's back! Guess I'll have to watch it again.

[@pleasedontwatchthese9593]

Its the extended directors cut

[@Typo205]

Bruh that box looks like an off-brand looney toons VHS from 97. Nostalgic as fuck, I trust them instantly.

[@kbhasi]

Pirated VHS tapes and VCDs, oh my. This reminds me of when my parents had a drawer full of pirated and bootleg VCDs back in the day.

[@kylehicks1995]

Man I thought Energy+ died off years ago, I've not seen them in YEARS! My dad had a couple of their batteries in the day with a Toshiba Satellite laptop (I don't remember the model name) he bought in an auction from his previous workplace before they went out of business and he went self-employed that was running Windows 3.1 that were still NiCad! To see them making them selling Lithium ion batteries is awesome! Thanks for the blast from the past Clint, this nostalgia trip was awesome to see!

[@Isaacfess]

This is just so niche and interesting.

[@Chanicle]

I bought an x200 tablet this week and i'm excitedly waiting for it to arrive. Thinkpads are underrated... thinkpads were underrated even when they were current.

[@2BuckFridays]

I have this laptop, nice to know this is a thing! Might look into it some day.

[@darmarfran]

Ah, spiderwebs. Brings me back to when I lived in NC. My wife and I would go out on hikes early in the morning before anyone else had made it out, and we'd walk through 500 spiderwebs. So pleasant. Oh, sweet battery btw.

[@radimkolar2270]

You might need to use drain the battery completely and then fully charge, repeat that couple times and it should initialize itself

[@RobotPorter]

Yes. This should solve the issue.

[@5mf1nc]

DON'T do that to LI-ION batteries!!!! Maybe for Ni-Cd or NiMH, but never for Li-Ion!

[@p1mrx]

@@5mf1nc it's bad to overdischarge Li-ion batteries, but one would hope that the laptop is designed to cut off before reaching that point. I would try it once, while the battery is still in warranty.

[@Z098]

@@5mf1nc LI-ION batteries from reliable sources should have circuitry to prevent overdischarge, IBM would be one. Cheap Chinese electronics often skip this circuitry which is why there was an issue with "hover" boards. Many Laptops instruct you to discharge the battery and fully recharge it to re-calibrate the measurement of it.

[@vivanecrosis]

Hearing your happy face is always entertaining to me and over 3000 other people! :D

[@Quickened1]

So nice of you Clint to give Doom a chance by handicapping yourself with limited visibility!!!

[@daehawk9585]

Congrats Clint!

[@pivanow1]

I've never seen someone so happy about a new battery kkkk

[@Njuregen]

This one sparks joy ^^

[@MarkyShaw]

Now you can truly enjoy the great outdoors!

[@dreammfyre]

Sunlight + old lcds never works, sadly. Bought a DSI XL last year I thought I was gonna play RPGs outside in the summer with. Nope. Even in the shade it’s just too dim.

[@russianbot8576]

this is why i love the gba sp 001! frontlit screen means it's PERFECT in the sun, but usable as well at night. the 101 is nice, but the backlight mod GBA sp is overrated, as they end up tossing the 001 screens to do them. no options for this with DS unfortunately.

[@tfruba]

I have a slightly newer computer (Dell C610) and same story here :(

[@eDoc2020]

That's only an issue with _transmissive_ backlit LCDs. Reflective LCDs (most Game Boys, calculators, watches, etc) are great in the sun but not useful in the dark. Transflective displays are a mix of both and can be used in the dark or in bright light except they generally aren't as bright in either situation. These used to be common in older phones and MP3 players with color screens, but are rare in newer devices (likely due to cheap high-efficiency LED backlights). If you want to run a modern LCD in the sun the "best" option is to remove the display's inner foil and backlight the screen directly using the sun.

[@bwuffie3]

We're happy you're happy!

[@Smashmilk]

I use to play Doom on this very same model thinkpad it was for my Dads business but I snuck Doom on there for when I was stuck waiting in the car or something on his trips.. loved that you didnt have to have the disk to play it back then that was a big deal lol the Watm And Fuzzies you started it up ..

[@JasonPullara]

I said it last video, I'll say it again: Electrons from 1995! A fantastic vintage!

[@Zerbey]

There's calibration tools you can download, but in my experience they tend to damage the battery. I'm willing to bet the cells they used are not the same as the original and the charging circuitry in the ThinkPad just isn't getting the readings it expects. Just deal with the 80% is my advice.

[@LGR]

Most likely will just deal with the discrepancy it seems, thanks!

[@KrzysztofC-1]

@@LGR The only thing I would try to calibrate it is to charge fully and discharge fully at least once, maybe 2-3 times max. And remember that when putting it to storage for longer time, it is best to discharge laptop batteries to 50-60%. Also, charging them to 100% and using power brick (never discharging) long term kills them too.

[@FennecTECH]

This is a normal behavior for this model of device. The 380 battery only communicates those values. This is suggested by the “Fuel” application that comes with it

[@АлексейГриднев-и7р]

I can think of one trick. You can first measure the time between full charge and full discharge while running, e.g. a Quake demo for as long as it can. Then, just write a simple VBA program which will just decrease the "battery percentage" linearly with time, so that it reaches 0 by the end of the time period measured above. Not super accurate for sure, but, given that those CPUs did not throttle and always worked at full speeed, it might be reasonable to assume that battery discharge speed was more or less constant. For bonus points, the script could adjust the timer based on CPU load, if the relation is still there :) I hope it makes sense!

[@eDoc2020]

@jdslyman That feature was introduced when Lenovo took over. I _think_ the T60 and T61 let you limit the charge but the T400 definitely does.

[@retropuffer2986]

Great video! Love that era of IBM laptops.

[@sersoft_corp]

I had a 380XD in the mid 2000's and the battery on it was still good, I had good times playing half-life, nfs3, divx movies on CD and flash games with it until the backlight died, I sold it to a classmate for around 50$ if I remember correctly. Also had a 380ED but it was just not the same.

[@Dragonfire511]

Love the wood flooring on your house.

[@IRWPD]

Nice to know you can still buy batteries for old computers.

[@Walczyk]

i love how honest and legit lgr always is!

[@jacobnelson5906]

The battery remaining percentage is determined by cell voltage. As a battery Is depleted the voltage decreases. If it’s an older battery it’s possible that it just can’t produce those high volts anymore.

[@UncleMikeRetro]

I am very impressed at the ability we have to still get "stuff" these days. Chips, bits, etc. Nice little battery video! Who ever says that? 😎

[@cvbabc]

Clint all of your videos are interesting. Some are more entertaining to me. My favorites are the Oddware, New Old Computer/Devices, Historical and Game Review ones, but all your content is fun. I miss the food ones!!! Those were great!

[@j.t.5178]

I would love for Clint to go to a cafe with everyone with their damn crap MacBook Pros writing their non-existant novels and Clint comes in with his IBM ThinkPad 380XD and start playing Doom on high volume. I would shake his hand and say "Thank you, good sir!" I'm just surprised you found a battery replacement for a 90s laptop still working! Awesome!

[@londongaz2]

"Future LGR here" brings to mind A Christmas Carol for some reason 😁

[@ianmiller6040]

LGR of Christmas Yet to Come *scare chord*

[@Chaos89P]

No! Don't invoke the Christmas Clone! It's still too early!

[@Mr.Zoomy.]

I’m a simple man, I see a new LGR video I click like and watch. ❤️

[@LMacNeill]

I've never found older laptops to have accurate power-meters. Honestly, I think it was the way they measured the power-level of the battery back then -- it would hang on some not-quite-100% level forever, and then just drop like a rock after a couple of hours. I've had several late '90s / early '00s laptops that did that. I think it's just the nature of the beast.

[@NickCharles]

Nice! Might have to check them out for my T60. My original battery is down to about 25% of the original capacity and I've gone 0-3 on Amazon and Ebay battery replacements so far.

[@hjalfi]

I'm currently trying to build a replacement battery for a PowerBook 150; I have a 3d printed battery shell, and am now trying to source some nicad AAs and an appropriate battery holder to put in it.

[@dormcat]

Just watched the original upload 30 min ago then suddenly the re-upload appears. XD

[@frozendude707]

Usually the charge circuit creates and maintains a charge profile to display an accurate reading, but to get it to a reasonable level you should give it some somewhat complete discharge and charge data so it does not have to guess, so just sacrifice some of the limited charge cycles and fully discharge and charge it 2 or 3 times in one go, then it should give you an accurate percentage, and as a bonus it would often last longer before cutting off. Usually recommended this back when I sold and repaired computers, and it does work at least for the Windows 2000 to Windows 8 laptops I have experience trying this with. I think it was called training the battery.

[@PsRohrbaugh]

Older screens are slightly dimmer than when new due to breakdown of the cold cathodic lamps. And yes older battery gauges were notoriously inaccurate. I had a Compaq laptop that would steadily count down to 0%, then continue running for a good half hour before the laptop would spontaneous shut off. Made it really nerve wracking using that last bit.

[@crescentfreshsongs]

Playing games on a 1997 ThinkPad outside on a sunny day... now that's a pastime I could get into.

[@DarKnightKilla13]

Putting off washing my pollen-covered '98 Chevy Cav 2 door to watch this... glad I did, haha. Love this content stuff!

[@lydialoud]

Surprisingly the battery in my ThinkPad 760ED still holds enough of a charge to last for around 25-30 minutes. Would be nice if they also had compatible replacements. $130 is quite a lot though, nearly what I paid for the laptop

[@thomasK-IT]

Man I wish I found a new battery for my IBM 755C aswell, this is awesome! :D

[@sokoloft3]

Nice. I bought a battery for my Toshiba L655 I've pimped out. Got it for a little under $15 on eBay. Unfortunate you couldn't get a cheap battery but I can see why by the age of the device. I was surprised at how much I could mod my L655. If you ever see one on eBay with a pentium cpu. You can swap the cpu's in them. They're socketed. I put an i5-560m in mine. SSD, HDD caddy to replace the dead cd drive. New keyboard and battery. Also an intel WiFi module with bluetooth. Things pretty sweet to run a Linux distro on. I have Manjaro on mine.

[@creepingnet]

Reminds me of that NEC Versa P/75 I have that came with a good battery somehow. I swear my P75 and M75 486 get more travel than my modern laptops do. I do find those older batteries are funky. My Versa M and P sometimes run an hour on 3 bars of 4...sometimes I get 30 minutes from one bar.....sometimes it drops right away. Old laptops can be pretty wacky from a power management perspective.

[@Jdbye]

The battery percentage is measured from the voltage (as you probably know), but the voltage drop is not linear, It drops quickly from the 4.2V per cell maximum down to about 4.1V then drops slowly down to about 3.7V and then drops quicker down to around 3.1V at which point the battery is pretty much empty. I guess these older devices are reporting the raw battery percentage without applying a curve to account for the non-linear voltage drop, so the percentage reported is never going to be as accurate as we are used to from newer devices. The exact curve of the voltage drop differs between different models and brands of battery as well and maybe they just did not tune it for the specific batteries they used.

[@sambrown9494]

You've probably already thought of this but did you notice the screen go dimmer when your unplugged the mains? That's the software power saving kicking in. Fiddle with it and you'll get it a fair bit brighter outside. Whether it makes enough difference, I don't know. But yeah, software AND hardware brightness controls on that thing.

[@mikemoyercell]

I have a gateway 2000 colorbook2 that came with one of those batteries and it has always worked great which is nice. I have noticed that it only goes to 75% and then when it starts to die it will say 25% so i think it just is the way some batteries were calculated back then. It can last up to two hours which is nice.

[@thesmokingcap]

Sounds like the battery needs a re calibration. I know Dell or Compaq had a tool in the BIOS to do that directly. Not sure if there is a bootable tool for the ThinkPad. It might be a case of just using the laptop, running it completely dead, and charging back up to full once or twice

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The thought of the possibility that Clint sits somewhere in a cafe with a 24 year old thinkpad playing Doom fills me with joy.

[@mikipank]

Clint invented a new level of difficulty in Doom that reads: playing outside, on the original 1997 computer under the sun's rays, cobwebs and flying bugs, let's see who is now the "king" for "Doom"!

[@organiccold]

Clinton, normally running the battery until it dies and then changing it fully should calibrate it so it should show the correct charging level. Give it a go.

[@JallenMeodia]

You know oddly enough I had been "servicing" a Think pad for a relative until they finally decided to upgrade until last year. Didn't really occur to me that the model was so outdated. I guess there are newer models but yeah, it looks strikingly similar.

[@Strongit]

I find it funny that the game you're testing it with is doom. Way back in college when I picked up a pentium 2 toshiba laptop doom was what I ran to benchmark the battery. 45 minutes.

[@Charlesb88]

As others have said, you may need to calibrate the new battery before you will get a accurate charge remainingreading from it. Try discharging it fully then recharging it fully.

[@andywright6713]

7:50 Ah, The Eternal DooM, nearing 30 years old & it's still a great game.

[@MickyThunderV]

Mr LGR? Please give us more thrifts, it pleases my inner messiness!

[@youdud44]

I got a new (if you wanna call it new) battery for my Dell Inspiron 4000 a couple of weeks ago on sale for 30 bucks (normally 50) just so I wouldn't be tied to the wall either. Gives me about two and a half hours on a full charge which is pretty awesome for a 20-year old machine.

[@webster1211]

Entertaining AND informational!

[@VorpalGun]

On modern ThinkPads (both my 2008 and my 2018 ThinkPads have it) there is a battery recalibration feature in the official software. No idea when it was introduced, but it might be worth checking if that is a thing on yours. I can also set it so those ThinkPads don't charge to 100% in order to reduce the wear of the battery. Maybe yours have a setting in bios for that and that is preventing it charging to 100%?

[@DouglasWalrath]

battery charge level is measured by the voltage the battery puts out, as the battery charge decreases the voltage does too, for a 3.7 volt lithium ion battery fully charged generally means around 4.2 volts and 0% generally means around 3.0 volts

[@stephen1r2]

It may be inaccurate at high # or it may need calibration. Run it down to ~20% and then charge it fully. Check the bios. My Dell M4700 lets you specify max charge as full or anything lower. I have it set to 80%

[@thevoicelevel]

I'm gonna get me one of those for my 380ED!!! Thanks!!!

[@Toonrick12]

Looking at the website, it seems that Energy Plus is the shop front for Fedco Batteries, which seem to have quite a good reputation to them.

[@OneVerySadPanda]

Regulations forbid shipping a fully charged battery. From what I remember, there was a tool out there to resync batteries. Used to run it on an Acer i bought from HSN for 5 easy payments of $200. I think to recalibrate it… you have to drain it completely… and charge it back up completely… and drain it completely… maybe do this about 3-4 times and it should be calibrated… going back to my days of computer repair.

[@rpavlik1]

This is definitely the era where they said to run it flat then fully charge and leave it plugged in for a day to re-calibrate the gas gauge, I recall from having a Thinkpad about this age back when they were not as old. Also possible the third party battery gas gauge chip isn't great, or tbh the gas gauge chips are much less fancy and accurate than modern ones. (Modern ones usually don't require a full discharge to calibrate the capacity, but I imagine you'd need to use an old gas gauge chip to make an old model battery.)

[@Lukeno52]

Battery calibration issues are par for the course with most replacement batteries - but then it is exactly the same with old batteries that still hold a charge, many of those don't fully know what their calibration is even after several cycles. And at this point in time, it is very hard to judge how much is the battery, and how much is the laptop's internal circuitry as well.

[@AndrewFremantle]

On modern machines with modern battery management circuity, you calibrate them by fully discharging, then fully re-charging them. That gives the battery controller a solid idea of exactly what voltage is "dead", and exactly how much juice it can put in the battery to get it full. I have no idea if that logic applies to hardware as old as you've got there though.

[@little_forest]

What I thought as well. Though I think it measures the time and current, cause the voltage should be very constant to the end. However, I would just try to let it discharge and charge it again fully. It shouldn’t do any harm to the battery and maybe it works with this old laptop.

[@nickweir5086]

I got a 380D which still has the original battery I believe, it works and holds a charge for at least an hour. The only thing I don't like about these ThinkPads is how brittle the plastic can become. I opened mine up just to replace the HDD with a CF and the plastic was just falling apart, pieces just came off and I had to replace it because there was just a big hole in the side of it.

[@nightrider_]

I want to make it known that I liked the video after I cracked up to the fact that clint almost strangled himself with his mic cord xD