This is nothing new, In Santa Monica,ca. USA (the unofficial cell phone capatiol) We call hacked battery packs “Ball and Chain batteries”. I had enough cell phone batteries tied together to give 24 hours of battery power to a PC inside a back Pack. It took 8 hours to charge the thing.

Posted at 3:31 pm on Aug 1st, 2008 by joshua hall

I dont get it? Where exactly do you go where there isn’t a 120V or 12V power source? I’ve never used my laptop battery for more than 30 minutes….

If battery life is your shindig get a EEEPC!

Posted at 4:27 pm on Aug 1st, 2008 by Comm_Hawk

@1:
Outside, some places its hard to get to a outlet(such as the coffee shop on my campus has only a few ports and are usually taken) Class rooms it’s usually hard to find a outlet. Lots of time I just don’t bother to plug my notebook in.

Posted at 6:07 pm on Aug 1st, 2008 by jjrh

Reading through the thread on the forum it appears they just put the extra 6 batteries in parallel with the original 3 – that’s so something I would never do with rechargable lithium batteries! it means the charging controller board doesn’t have individual control of the cells.

You’ve all seen the lithium battery fires on YouTube?

I’ve been wanting to get a larger battery pack for this 9 month old Asus Eee I’m typing on but only rarely have I needed to use it beyond when the battery runs down and I’m not near a power outlet (I have mains & car chargers for it). Personally I’d buy one, not hack one up.

Posted at 6:52 pm on Aug 1st, 2008 by Haku

I’m working on rebuilding my MSI Wind battery. The cells have been replaced, but I’m waiting on my SMD probes and i2c programmer for reprogramming the bq20z70.

Posted at 8:11 pm on Aug 1st, 2008 by Alex

re: “get an eeepc” the eeepc’s battery life is shockingly bad. even in sleep it’ll run down entirely in 6 hours.

Posted at 2:02 am on Aug 2nd, 2008 by ex-parrot

I just wanted to mention that a custom enclosure could most likely be easily made by opening up the stock enclosure to allow for the additional cells, then vacuum-forming an additional piece to cover the new cells, then just attaching it all together with super-glue / bondo and maybe some modeling putty to finish it off nicely.

Posted at 5:46 am on Aug 2nd, 2008 by K1ngfunK

Yeah I’m hoping to make a case in exactly that fashion! I’ve been watching all the DIY vacuum forming clips on YouTube.

“they just put the extra 6 batteries in parallel with the original 3 – that’s so something I would never do with rechargable lithium batteries”

Almost all Li-On battery packs are like this, the controller monitors each cell group (3.7v) not the capacity per se. Read the thread, I explain it better.

Posted at 6:33 am on Aug 2nd, 2008 by The Tech Guy

to comment about the TSA confiscation linked… its way old hat.
not to mention that tsa has confiscated or “changed luggage” of far less suspicious items than 8 batteries taped together.

case in point: my laptop power connector broke while on vacation. given the limited supplies on hand, I simply soldered two wires to the pcb and slid them out the original hole.
Hey, remember that things like solder paste, and other chemicals used in electronics works WILL trigger the explosives machines at TSA. So, going through, the laptop was flagged, it was swabbed, and the little hidden red light went on. I was detained and questioned for 30 minutes about why it was modified, and what the wires do.
tsa was nice about it, and given the circumstances, I should have known they would have a problem with it. they let me put it in as checked luggage, but I couldnt have access to it on the plane. delayed the flight and everything.

tsa’s rule is no modifed electronics in the cabin. No exposed electronic circuits in the cabin. it sucks for us, but it makes sense.

Posted at 11:51 pm on Aug 3rd, 2008 by MRE

“tsa was nice about it…they let me put it in as checked luggage…tsa’s rule is no modifed electronics in the cabin…it sucks for us, but it makes sense.”

Err, no it doesn’t. If they don’t understand whether the modification makes the device ‘bad’ then it shouldn’t be allowed on the plane at all. If it is likely to do something ‘bad’ then it is as possible that it can do it from the checked luggage hold as from the passenger cabin. Pan Am Flight 103?

Posted at 1:56 am on Aug 10th, 2008 by PMM