Long story short, my laptops DC input is no longer working. Yes, I’ve tested every aspect of the power supply. I even measured the motherboard input voltage, and it is being properly fed. I suspect a faulty DC-DC converter.

So, I had this idea of removing the battery permanently, and instead emulating it with a power supply with matching voltage. I don’t really need the battery anyway (I mostly use a laptop for the form factor).

In theory, the laptop will then think it’s running off of battery power. Permanently. Are there any consequences in terms of performance that could arise from this? Of course, the power settings will need to be adjusted, but beyond that I’m wondering if there’s a hardware aspect that I cannot control.

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    2 months ago

    It won’t work, it will try, then inspect the battery for its voltage and other stats via i2c, decide the battery is unsafe, and shut itself off.

    I might be wrong, but systems I’ve worked with do this because they want to make sure the battery won’t explode, they have a battery management chip, either on the motherboard or in the battery, and this tells it whether the battery is safe to use or you should shut down, and if it can’t communicate it will probably assume it should shut down.

    Personally I’d solder a new barrel connector on, or figure out where the dc-dc converter is and either replace it or backfeed.

    • Excigma@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 months ago

      It may be possible to get past that, I’ve seen people disassembling the battery to get the BMC and connecting the DC power supply to that instead.

      It sounds way more risky than OP’s initial idea. I wouldn’t recommend taking apart batteries.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          4·
          2 months ago

          I’ve taken apart laptop batteries. It isn’t that hard, but what op wants to make happen seems like a ton of sketch work.

          • beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            2 months ago

            Nah, totally easy and safe if you have a little experience tinkering with stuff like that.

            The fact that he came up with the idea in the first place tells me he’s halfway there. I think he’ll be fine with a little care.

            • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
              2·
              2 months ago

              It can be done I’m sure. But it’s still a whole lot of work instead of just fixing the issue. He’ll have to remove battery, disassemble it to get the control module inside, where his new psu to that so it fools the computer, drill through the case to run his wires and secure it to not be pulled on, and throw it all back together.