Graham Seaman wrote: > I'm running Debian on an old Dell Vostro 1520 - old and slow, but has been > working fine. Recently the PSU has stopped charging. It is genuinely empty; > if I power down and then try to boot with no power cable attached the laptop > is completely dead. > > I guess it's most likely this is a hardware failure, but since I'm unlikely > to find a viable replacement for the battery I'm hoping there might be some > firmware or other software change that could account for it.
A quick search shows lots of people selling replacement batteries from $12 to $60 US, most in the $20-25 range. A secret of many laptop batteries, including this one, is that the battery is largely a container to hold 18650 lithium battery cells, which can be purchased separately. Now, if the motherboard charging circuitry is toast, this won't work, and you should consider a new machine. -dsr-
