W3-810 will not charge

Draco_Red

I'm working on a tablet for a friend of mine; he had bought a w3-810 while in Japan and needed to have the language switched over from Japanise to English.  I was able to do that, but now I'm running into an issue where the battery simply won't charge.  Somethimes it'll show "0%, Charging", other times it'll say "0%, Not Charging", but no matter how long I leave it on AC it won't go past that 0%.  I did update the UEFI/BIOS to the latest version, 1.07 because I saw that a number of people on the message board said that fixed the problem when they ran unto the same issue, but it hasn't helped me. 

 

Tried charging it with the tablet on as well as with it off, no difference.  I've also checked the charger and it's working and the tablet will work when plugged in, but as soon as I unplug it it goes dead.

 

I tried to get ahold of Acer directly via their chat feature (which seems to be the only way to get ahold of them), however when entering the SNID or Serial Number it wouldn't let me advance, saying that it was invalid. So now I'm just hoping that someone on the board can help me, becuase I don't know what else to do here.

Draco_Red

Well, since I ran out of other options I removed the back cover from the tablet and tested the battery with my volt meter.  It appears that the battery over-discharged while in storage, so althogh power is going to the pins on the motherboard to charge the battery, the protection circuitry within the battery isn't allowing it to charge.

 

If anyone's interisted the battery model number is AP13G3N; it can be found online for about $55...   I guess my recomendation to my friend is just to use it plugged in.

padgett

Since you have apart you might try something that has worked for me on other notebooks and laptops. Apply the correct voltage (12v DC ?) directly to the battery for about 5 minutes. This should give it enough of a surface charge for the regular charger to start charging again.

mwkeefer

STOP!!!!

 

If I read the battery correctly it is a single 6800 mah 3.7v power source, connect 12V across it and you will kill it or blow it up or well you get the idea.

 

Notice there are 4 leads besides the dual power and ground lines?  Those lines I believe individually address each of the cells in parallel but I could be wrong - I've done some non-invasive probing at the voltages of the battery taps and also of the same taps connected to the PC and then to the charger.

 

Basically it seems this pack is made up of 4 paralleled cells of 1700 mah or at minimum 2 paralleled cells of 3400 mah in parallel for 6800 mah total capacity.

 

I'll post more as I figure it out but it seems one or more of my  cells are basically just a drain - perhaps I can replace them, I have an ample supply of lipo but not sure this is the best solution even if it would work as this unit is brand new out of box.  No wonder it won't charge a cell is at 4.2v and the other at 3.2 or so (logical cutout for lipo).

 

Hope this helps!

 

-mwkeefer