Sony Vaio repair, battery pinout needed. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 08:49:01 am
content: So i found a Sony Vaio at the local electronics disposal place but it's missing the battery and charger.The plastic screen frame is smashed in one corner and the hinges are broken off but the LCD seems fine and the main frame of the laptop is perfectly fine.It uses a funny charging plug so i can't use any of my chargers on it, luckily i know where i can get one for 5 bucks.The main problem is that there's no battery, most likely the owner who threw it away disposed of the battery at the battery disposal.A new battery goes for 30 bucks and i'm not feeling like spending that much on a laptop that might not work.I do have a bunch of different laptop batteries but they all have a different connectors than the one on the Vaio.The connector on the vaio is 7pin of which two are longer but are not connected together meaning they're the + and -, i'll know which is which once i plug the charger in.I'd like to find out what the other 5 are for so that i could rig up a battery, because the laptop won't power on without a it.Thanks.1-------- +/-2----- ?3----- ?4----- ?5----- ?6----- ?7-------- +/-

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 01:50:25 pm
content: After a bit of digging around i found out that the laptop won't accept third party batteries without a bios rewrite.I've found out that the older vaio batteries use a Renesas R2J240F10, which shows up nothing on google, but it's a micro, there's no hiding from it.The battery i'm looking for probably uses a micro aswell so that you can't use third party batteries.I'll be going tomorrow to a flea market to see if i can find any sony batteries, they all use 7 pin headers by the looks of it so i can hopefully rig them up to test the laptop.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 03:45:24 pm
content: Model number? Saying "it's a Vaio" is not specific enough. You may be able to find a schematic.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 05:07:48 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on September 24, 2016, 03:45:24 pmSure, it's the vpceb3m1e.Ps: Also from what i can gather the battery works on the standard SMBUS but there's some mumbo jumbo on the BMS chip to tell the PC if the battery is OEM, which is why i'm a bit frustrated.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 11:17:45 pm
content: That should be a Foxconn MBX-224. You can find the schematichereand the battery pinout is on page 71. Apparently there's a BIOS patch floating around that will disable the OEM battery check.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 02:26:25 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on September 24, 2016, 11:17:45 pmThanks, i'll have a look at the BIOS patch.The laptop did power up without the battery and seems to be fine other than it's full of malware.When idle the CPU load is @60%, RAM usage is at 2GB ( 50% ) and the HDD usage is 100% constant.Search history reveals that there's alot of redirects from "onclickads" on russian sites, which would explain the poor performance of the laptop.Makes me wonder if the owner became frustrated by the super laggy laptop and got a bit violent resulting in the smashed LCD frame ?

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 02:33:12 pm
content: Yup, the BATT_ID is probably the identification pin, i'll guess after the BIOS patch i'll have to leave it floating.