Anyone run into a laptop reporting significant charge / shows status as "charging" but loses power the moment it's unplugged from the mains?

"upower -d" output doesn't show any time related data.

Does this "0 W" seem off?

energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 12.106 V
percentage: 69%

More weirdness.

Every time power is lost the system clock consistently resets back to around "Mon 02 Dec 2019 10:30 PM IST"

Laptop is from 2017/2018.
Coreboot was installed early 2019.
Latest Debian amd64 kernel from Sep 2020.

Where could it be getting that time from?

First entry in syslog...

Dec 2 22:32:52 eternia kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.19.0-11-amd64 ([email protected]) (gcc version 8.3.0 (Debian 8.3.0-6)) #1 SMP Debian 4.19.146-1 (2020-09-17)

Opened the laptop and removed the battery and it still retains the date.

Over the past few weeks charge percentage had dropped to around 65% or lower.

I just noticed it was charging(left terminal) and barely a minute later (right terminal.)

The battery is haunted!

And charging again....

Couldn't find a replacement battery because Acer doesn't sell Chromebook batteries in India.

Decided to try making a frankenbattery...

Laptop boots up okay.. so I managed to not blow up any components.

Still doesn't run on battery or remember the current date though but battery voltage is below the minimum voltage of ~11V.

Will let it charge for a few hours and see if things change once the voltage improves.

Fingers crossed.

By the time I opened the laptop and took the battery out about a month ago one of the cells had completely died.

And the other two cells were puffed up.

The battery was in a plastic frame with a plastic/adhesive sheet wrap around it, one side tore up while opening.

Tried to source replacement cells but was unsuccessful.

The only readily available lipo cells were thinner /smaller and had much lower capacity.(3000mAh)

The original battery was probably 5000mAh or more.

Aftet unsuccessfully hunting for replacements / compatibles at SP Road, finally ended up buying this HP CM03 battery which said 3S1P on the shell and the dimensions were pretty close to the dead cell I'd carried with me.

Opened it up and found that the cells a bit smaller and 4300mAh.

(The small powerbank on the right was another potential cell donor if I hadn't found the HP battery.)

The official Acer batteries were spot welded but a little bit of flexing made the strips come right off.(Damaged only the first terminal as I twisted in the wrong direction. )

The HP-compatible was soldered and came off with easily with a soldering iron.

Placed the newly extracted donor cells in the frame and soldered them together.

(Printed lipo cell details and terminal positions on the old and new cells were reversed. So had to mark the terminals on the battery and the connecting sticky cable too.)

Covered the soldered terminals with a generous amount of kapton tape and the frankenbattery was ready for use.

Battery isn't actually charging. Just moving a few mV up and down.

Apparently the batteries come with a protection circuit that stops charging batteries when they go bad.

Need to figure out how to reset the BMS on Acer batteries.

Apparently resetting the BMS needs a charged battery.

Might have partially killed an old SMPS in the process but frankenbattery is now charging in Jugaad-Max mode

There's a lid to cover the pan in case things go south.

(Alligator clips would have saved time and trouble.)

More than an hour later, yet to hit 12V.

How long does it take for paint to dry in the summer?