Run a Laptop of Some Old Batteries

This Tech. demonstration is to raise awareness that laptop batteries can easily be replaced with any other kind providing it is of correct, or sufficient, voltage. Here I am using two 6V. batteries rigged up to provide twice the voltage to power a Compaq Armada 110.

*Depending on your laptop warranty this may void it!*

Before reading this Instructable, I recommend reading this one first!!

For this you will need to take your old laptop battery apart, The battery I used was very stubborn and I only got it apart with considerable cosmetic damage, For taking it apart try starting by the contacts where the battery connects to the laptop, I have not got any proper pictures of this step as I did it about 1 month ago, and I only just un-earthed the battery casing, Once you have got a little bit of the battery casing prised up things will either be easier or a bit more difficult, the Compaq battery was fused together so I was practically just breaking plastic!

After you have got the battery apart you will find around 9 battery cells depending on the type of laptop battery. You will need to rip all these chunky batteries out, making sure not to rip the wire leads to the batteries off the circuit board (pic. 2)

To get some batteries to power the laptop I used the two batteries that are in my 5 million candle power torch, which are rating 6V each so to get 12V they were rigged up together for combined power, I don't know how long they would last fully charged but I estimate at the very least 30mins. 100%CPU

If you are using two batteries you will need to connect the positiver (red) of one battery to the negative (black) of the other battery.

Now after you have got your batteries the next thing to do is to connect them to the leads of the laptop battery circuit board, you will need to connect positive of your new batteries to the positive lead on the circuit board. I recommend using wires of a decent length for ease, and also using red and black coloured wires attached to the corresponding battery connections (i.e. red to red) it will make things easier.

I had to cut a little hole for the wires to pass out of the battery casing, remember to thing about this and to do it so that the wires come out in a handy place, don't do this if you don't want to spoil your battery casings good looks.

It has to be said that I had to use the A/C power connector to boot the laptop but after that it worked fine without the A/C power, I don't know whether this was because the laptop is old or it couldn't recognize the batteries to boot the laptop, but it did recognize the batteries with the A/C power plugged in and the laptop off.